Flooring Tiles Quotes

One foot in front of the other, counting tiles on the floor so I don't have to focus the blur of painted smiles, fake faces.

From the antique Persian rugs covering the gleaming hardwood floors to the molded tin ceilings and ornate chandeliers, the house was a showstopper. Throughout its long life, no one had allowed this home to fall into disrepair. Every detail of the wainscoting, every pocket door, every window, floor tile, and bathtub was original to the house.

Despite the business and auto-rickshaws and bantering Bengalis just beyond his brown front door, Sanjit cultivates a distinct learning environment and energy, one created and galvanized above the tile floors, within the thin walls, below the imperative ceiling fans, and embraced by books.

So, you’re asking me how long before a couple can break up after having sex?” And I was a tomato. “Yeah.”  “So you’ve never broken up with someone after having sex?” I stared at him. And that smug sonofabitch had the nerve to chuckle. My face was on fire and I wanted to slide to the floor. Under the tile. “That’s not . . . it isn’t—” “I can fix that for you. Seems like the least I can do.

My child, I know you're not a child But I still see you running wild Between those flowering trees. Your sparkling dreams, your silver laugh Your wishes to the stars above Are just my memories. And in your eyes the ocean And in your eyes the sea The waters frozen over With your longing to be free. Yesterday you'd awoken To a world incredibly old. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. You had to kill this child, I know. To break the arrows and the bow To shed your skin and change. The trees are flowering no more There's blood upon the tiles floor This place is dark and strange. I see you standing in the storm Holding the curse of youth Each of you with your story Each of you with your truth. Some words will never be spoken Some stories will never be told. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. I didn't say the world was good. I hoped by now you understood Why I could never lie. I didn't promise you a thing. Don't ask my wintervoice for spring Just spread your wings and fly. Though in the hidden garden Down by the green green lane The plant of love grows next to The tree of hate and pain. So take my tears as a token. They'll keep you warm in the cold. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. You've lived too long among us To leave without a trace You've lived too short to understand A thing about this place. Some of you just sit there smoking And some are already sold. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. This is the age you are broken or turned into gold.

I imagine the wave of water colliding with the rock and spilling over the tile floor, collecting around my shoes. Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but I feel like when you believe that something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can’t help yourself.

I turned to see his expression. When I saw that he was serious, I shot hum a dubious look. “Sleeping in between the toilet and the tub on a cold, hard tile floor with a vomiting idiot was one of your best nights? That’s sad, Trav.” “No, sitting up with you when you’re sick and you falling asleep in my lap was one of my best night.” (…) “Thanks, Trav. I won’t make you babysit me again.” He leaned against his pillow. “Whatever. No one can hold your hair back like I can.

Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'.

But between the images, we are privy to the real-life action being played out on the set. Peeta's attempt to continue speaking. The camera knocked down to record the white tiled floor. The scuffle of boots. The impact of the blow that's inseparable from Peeta's cry of pain. And his blood as it splatters the tiles.

Home is not where you have to go but where you want to go; nor is it a place where you are sullenly admitted, but rather where you are welcomed – by the people, the walls, the tiles on the floor, the followers beside the door, the play of life, the very grass.

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that I was covered in blood. The second thing I noticed was that this didn’t bother me the way it should have. I didn’t feel the urge to scream or speak, to beg for help, or even to wonder where I was. Those instincts were dead, and I was calm as my wet fingers slid up the tiled wall, groping for a light switch. I found one without even having to stand. Four lights slammed on above me, one after the other, illuminating the dead body on the floor just a few feet away. My mind processed the facts first. Male. Heavy. He was lying face down in a wide, red puddle that spread out from beneath him. The tips of his curly black hair were wet with it. There was something in his hand. The fluorescent lights in the white room flickered and buzzed and hummed. I moved to get a better view of the body. His eyes were closed. He could have been asleep, really, if it weren’t for the blood. There was so much of it. And by one of his hands it was smeared into a weird pattern. No. Not a pattern. Words. PLAY ME. My gaze flicked to his hand. His fist was curled around a small tape recorder. I moved his fingers—still warm—and pressed play. A male voice started to speak. "Do I have your attention?" the voice said. I knew that voice. But I couldn’t believe I was hearing it.

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.

What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star? That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star… Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago. I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble. I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below. I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon. History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment. 'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow. It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple. I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.' He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.' 'What?' He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said. 'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.' Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him. 'That information is classified, I'm afraid.' 1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor. 'Is it open to the public?' I said. 'Not generally, no.' I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point. 'Are you happy here?' I said at last. He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said. 'But you're not very happy where you are, either.' St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch. 'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.' He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.

But the floor retained an unparalleled measure of excellence with a decorative array of ceramic tiles precisely laid by an anonymous Muslim artisan with limitless patience, pride, or skill.  He left behind an ornate work of art in a short, squat, non-descript building near the most dangerous piece of real estate on the planet.  Silva often wondered how an architect so careless came to work with a craftsman so precise.  Looking at that floor, she often thought that if everyone applied just a fraction of his dedication to their own work, it might cancel out the hatred driving the destruction.

In Michaela's favourite restaurant, I lift my glass and cutlery spills onto the expensive tiled floor. The sound crashes high as the skylight. Looking at me, Michaela pushes her own silverware over the edge. I fell in love amid the clattering of spoons....

Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them.

Who in their right mind counts the tiles on the floor when they go visiting a neighbor?

The floor of ice cream parlor bothered me. It was black-and-white checkboard tile, bigger than supermarket checkboard. If I looked only at a white square, I would be all right, but it was hard to ignore the black squares that surrounded the white ones. The contrast got under my skin. The floor meant yes, no, this, that, up, down, day, night -all the indecisions and opposites that were bad enough in life without having them spelled out for you on the floor.

To put it lightly, I don’t enjoy showering. Being clean, yes. The act of being in the shower, also yes. But everything about having to brush out my tangled hair beforehand, stepping out onto a ratty bath mat or tile floors, getting dry, combing my hair out again—I hate all of that, which means I’m a three-shower-a-week person to Alex’s one to two showers a day.

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

She felt the cold blast from the sterile air conditioning on her bare arms and thighs, as she ambled down the center of the shopping complex's ground floor. The scene was a swirl of candy bright lights--the Victoria's Secret fuchsia signboard, signboards which lured one to purchase "confidence," or "sexual appeal," or whatever it was that was being advertised--the fluorescent lights in each store, contrasting with the shiny, black-tiled walls and eye-catching speckled marble tiles on the ground. One could lick the floor--the tiles were spotless, clean like the fake air she was breathing in, like the atoms and cells in her that were decaying in stale neglect.

Thanks for staying with me last night,” I said, stroking Toto’s soft fur. “You didn’t have to sleep on the bathroom floor.” “Last night was one of the best nights of my life.” I turned to see his expression. When I saw that he was serious, I shot him a dubious look. “Sleeping in between the toilet and the tub on a cold, hard tile floor with a vomiting idiot was one of your best nights? That’s sad, Trav.” “No, sitting up with you when you’re sick, and you falling asleep in my lap was one of my best nights. It wasn’t comfortable, I didn’t sleep worth a shit, but I brought in your nineteenth birthday with you, and you’re actually pretty sweet when you’re drunk.” “I’m sure between the heaving and purging I was very charming.” He pulled me close, patting Toto who was snuggled up to my neck. “You’re the only woman I know that still looks incredible with your head in the toilet. That’s saying something.

Abruptly, Elliot startles us all by standing and pulling his chair back so it scrapes across the tile floor. All eyes turn to him. He gazes down at Kate for one moment and then drops to one knee beside her. Oh. My. God. He reaches for her hand, and silence settles like a blanket over the entire restaurant as everyone stops eating, stops talking, stops walking, and stares. "My beautiful Kate, I love you. Your grace, your beauty, and your fiery spirit have no equal, and you have captured my heart. Spend your life with me. Marry me." Holy shit!

He holds Willem so close that he can feel muscles from his back to his fingertips come alive, so close that he can feel Willem's heart beating against his, can feel his rib cage against his, and his stomach deflating and inflating with air. 'Harder,' Willem tells him, and he does until his arms grow first fatigued and then numb, until his body is sagging with tiredness, until he feels that he really is falling: first through the mattress, and then the bed frame, and then the floor itself, until he is sinking in slow motion through all the floors of the building, which yield and swallow him like jelly. Down he goes through the fifth floor, where Richard's family is now storing stacks of Moroccan tiles, down through the fourth floor, which is empty, down through Richard and India's apartment, and Richard's studio, and then to the ground floor, and into the pool, and then down and down, farther and farther, past the subway tunnels, past bedrock and silt, through underground lakes and oceans of oil, through layers of fossil and shale, until he is drifting into the fire at the earth's core. And the entire time, Willem is wrapped around him, and as they enter the fire, they aren't burned but melted into one being, their legs and chests and arms and heads fusing into one.

Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labor of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain that is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes.

The honeymoon phase was over. He still called me his girl, still held me like I meant everything and I really wanted to believe he was still completely here with me. I looked over his body and at his sleeping face. I slowly moved out of his bed, and tip toed to the bathroom where I fell to the tiled floor and sobbed.

IN EUROPE, I vomited into small buckets and brushed my teeth repeatedly with chalky British toothpaste. I lay prone on the bathroom floors of several museums, feeling the cold tile underneath my cheek as my brain liquefied and seeped out my ear, bubbling. Migraines left my blood spreading across unfamiliar hotel sheets, dripping on the floors, oozing into carpets, soaking through leftover croissants and Italian lace cookies.

Last night was one of the best nights of my life." "Sleeping in between the toilet an the tub on a cold, hard tile floor with a vomiting idiot was one of our best nights? That's sad, Trav.

Flavius's foot catches on a metal grate over a circular opening in the floor, and my stomach contracts when I think of why a room would need a drain. The stains of human misery that must have been hosed off these white tiles...

Aaron attempted to place me on the black-and-white tiled floor. “Nuh-uh.” I shook my head, holding on to his neck a little closer and keeping my legs around his waist. “I like it up here.” “Yeah?” His voice was coated with humor but also with something thick and glossy. I tightened my grip on him. “That much?” “Yep,” I admitted into his neck. “I think you can carry me everywhere from now on. Walking on my own is not going to cut it anymore.” His palms rearranged me around him, shifting me to his side. He dropped a kiss on my temple. “And I think I could get used to that very quickly.

You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined,that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'.

Now whenever I left class to go to the boys' room, I worried that I would end up on the blue tiled floor in a puddle of piss and blood.

Slippers always seemed like kind of a nonsense item until she came to Ellingham and felt the bathroom floor on the first proper day of wintry weather. Once skin touched tile and part of her soul died, she knew what slippers were for.

With blue vinyl-tile floor, pale-green wainscoating, pink walls, a yellow ceiling, and orange-and-white stork-patterned drapes, the expectant fathers' lounge churned with the negative energy of color overload. It would have served well as the nervous-making set for a nightmare about a children's-show host who led a secret life as an ax murderer. The chain-smoking clown didn't improve the ambience.

He wanted to roar like a lion on a cement floor. And bellow like a polar bear with yellow fur worn down to pink skin against the tiles of an enclosure in a zoo. The disgust must come. Let it drip down the walls. Scorch the ceiling black with hatred. Liberate rage.

Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel; and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another’s heads, the lighted, ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair. In the coastline’s haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel’s withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees’ jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed. Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.

This corner of history was as real as the tiled floor under our feet or the wooden tabletop under our fingers. The people to whom it had happened had actually lived and breathed and felt and thought and then died, as we did—as we would.

[He] spat. Literally spat on this gorgeous tile floor. "EW!" Iko cried, "You heathen!

I found my way home, stripped naked, and lay on the bathroom floor, the cool tiles pushing up. Keeping me from falling. I didn't know how long the floor would hold me. I prayed Ellen would come home...

We ended up in a tangle on the floor. The tile cooling heated skin. Muscles still shaking. Dominic stroked a hand over my hip. “I think I pulled a hamstring,” he whispered. “I think you impregnated my lungs.

This corner of history was as real as the tiled floor under our feet or the wooden tabletop under our fingers. The people to whom it had happened had actually lived and breathed and felt and thought and then died, as we did - as we would.

Then she put it back in the bag and pulled out the bone-handled razor. Opened the blade. How light and lethal it felt in her hand. Allison rolled her sleeve up over her biceps and cut across the vein and artery. Warm blood splashed onto the tiled floor. Mum... It felt good, like the pain in her was leaking out with the blood, like a terrible pressure was being removed. It was soothing. She slid down the wall. Mum... But as she was there, things quickly changed; there was too much blood.

She looked around for a place to be. A small place. The closet? ... It was both small and bright, and she wanted to be in a very small, very bright place. Small enough to contain her grief.Bright enough to throw into relief the dark things that cluttered her.Once inside, she sank to the tile floor next to the toilet. On her knees, her hand on the cold rim of the bathtub, she waited for something to happen…inside.

Fuck, babe,” Chocolate Eyes said, stepping forward. He grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet off the tiled floor. “You look like crap...worse, actually.” He wiped her tears with the calloused pad of his thumb. “You want to get out of this pisshole or not?

As he walked, he knew the bathroom instantly because of the reflective tile floor. Hers would be the last door again. As he took another step forward, he could see a sliver of skin cut by the light, reflecting a glimpse of her pale skin. It served as a beacon to him, an invitation to touch something that would only belong to him. Could only be his.

The door to the situation room door opened, drawing her attention to a tall, lean man with eyes as sharp as razors. The sound of a metal chair scraping on the tile floor filled the room as Reed shot to his feet, stood at attention, and saluted crisply. The man stopped, scowled, and heaved a heavy sigh. "All right you clown. At ease. It hasn't been that long since I've been here." "Just showing my respect, sir," Reed said with a smart-ass grin. "It's not often we're fortunate enough to be in the company of such greatness.

I am not dead, I can tell, because there is a strand of spaghetti on the green tile floor. What happens after death may be bad or good but there won’t be spilled spaghetti.

She counts the tiles on the cold bathroom floor lays her secrets out like stones square by square tile by tile she doesn't feel anymore.

Watching a hell horse try to tiptoe so his gigantic hooves didn’t ring loudly on the tiled floor and wake our queen made me choke back a laugh.

Even the tile is spotted with droplets of hair dye, making it look like a unicorn pissed on the floor.

I never dreamed that she meant lights. Sparkling. Shimmering. Waves of light. We could see them from the front of the cafe. Besides the few customers, everyone who lived on the street was gathered inside. And I mean everyone, even strange little Esther. She'd squeezed herself into the darkest corner of the room, sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around her bent knees. But even her face was in awe. Silvers. Pearls. Iridescent pinks. They now sprayed out into the sunless room and hit the ceiling. The walls. The floor. Glowing copper. Gilded orange. And all kinds or gold. Sequins of light that swirled and spun through the air. Cascades of light flowing in, breaking up, and rolling like fluid diamonds over the worn tile. Emerald. Turquoise. Sapphire. It went on for hours. I looked over there and there were tears streaming down Gabe's wrinkled face: God bless you, Eve. And finally only the muted glow of a cool aquamarine. Then we heard the baby's first thin cry- and the place went wild.

My sisters compete. For favor, for suitors, for reputations. For our parents' love. We are connected only by secrets and lies.' Semele waved her kantharos at Euryale and Stheno, liquid sloshing once more onto the tiled floor. A harried girl hurried forward with a rag. 'You three accept other for all that you are and are not. You share your lives. That is sisterhood.

I followed, realizing with a start that my footsteps made no sound on the tile floor, or the marble stairs. It was instantly disorienting, like trying to talk when your ears are stuffed.

It may be that actual tears have stained the tile floors or soaked into the carpets of such places. It may be that these tears can never be removed. And everywhere the odor of melancholy, that is the very odor of memory.

The steep tiled roof had grown dark and mossy with age and rain. The triangular wooden frames fitted into the gables were intricately carved, the light that slanted through them and fell in patterns on the floor was full of secrets. Wolves. Flowers. Iguanas. Changing shape as the sun moved through the sky. Dying punctually at Dusk.

Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg – that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you’d imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of ‘life’. Now, with every day that passes, another door seems to close, the one marked PROFESSIONAL STUNTMAN, or FIGHT EVIL ROBOT, until as the weeks go by and the doors – GET BITTEN BY SNAKE, SAVE WORLD FROM ASTEROID, DISMANTLE BOMB WITH SECONDS TO SPARE – keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn’t necessarily need to be closed. (from "Skippy Dies")

…what amazed Matthew about the punch was the fact that it appeared at all. The fact that his hand made a fist and the fist took a journey and the journey ended on Declan’s face. The punch knocked Declan right off the stool and onto his back on the tile floor, fancy brogues pointing at the ceiling light. It knocked the breath right out of him (Matthew heard it) and it knocked the car keys right out of his pocket (Matthew saw it). A second later, his spilled coffee cup rolled off the counter and joined him on the floor with a clatter. It amazed Matthew that his hand, right after punching Declan, snatched the car keys off the floor. It was like he was a whole different person. It was like he was Ronan. “How do you like it?!” Matthew shouted daringly.

Smart people, like himself, who had acquired money and power weren’t nice because they had learned that caring about and helping others made them exposed and vulnerable, which led to failure. One had to look out for number one to get “the money” and “the power” the cabbie spoke of. Dale knew that money and power were finite. They were limited resources you couldn’t simply spread around the world for everyone to enjoy. Crafty, competitive people knew this and fought hard to get their share of it. People like the cabbie were naïve enough to think everyone would be happy sharing an equal amount of the pie. They lived in a fantasy world that socialism and communism touted. If the pie had been equally divided to everyone in the world, each person would hold a tiny sliver after the distribution was complete. Then everyone would be miserable and all those naïve people who had fought to make it happen would finally learn what they already knew—life was miserable with only a sliver of the pie. Of course the cabbie had suicidal thoughts and dreamed about shit towers piling high up into the sky; he was one of the caring people who had tried so hard to become another tile on the floor under the feet of cunning people, like himself, who were moving toward success by walking upon the altruistic pathway naïve people had constructed out of themselves. And that was more than fine with Dale. The greater number of people who thought like the cabbie the better, because it made it easier for people like himself to snatch up a bigger piece of the pie.

We have to discard the past and, as one builds floor by floor, window by window, and the building rises, so do we keep shedding -- first, broken tiles, then proud doors, until, from the past, dust falls as if it would crash against the floor, smoke rises as if it were on fire, and each new day gleams like an empty plate. There is nothing, there was always nothing. It all has to be filled with a new, expanding fruitfulness; then, down falls yesterday as in a well falls yesterday's water, into the cistern of all that is now without a voice, without fire. It is difficult to get bones used to disappearing, to teach eyes to close, but we do it unwittingly. Everything was alive, alive, alive,alive like a scarlet fish, but time passed with cloth and darkness and kept wiping away the flash of the fish. Water water water, the past goes on falling although it keeps a grip on thorns and on roots. It went, it went, and now memories mean nothing. Now the heavy eyelid shut out the light of the eye and what was once alive is now no longer living; what we were, we are not. And with words, although the letters still have transparency and sound, they change, and the mouth changes; the same mouth is now another mouth; they change, lips, skin, circulation; another soul took on our skeleton; what once was in us now is not. It left, but if they call, we reply "I am here," and we realize we are not, that what was once, was and is lost, lost in the past, and now does not come back." -"Past

There is a thumping silence, and the light of the one lamp across the wet tiled floor seems conscious that it will illuminate this and many other atrocities, just as it will go on shining through days and months of sudden speechless lusts, and all the intervening hours of silent emptiness.

The man followed me. “I will wipe that which is displeasing to God off the face of the earth!” he boomed. “The ground will soak up your blood!” I had at least two smart retorts to these sinister words on the tip of my tongue. (Soak up my blood? Oh, come off it, this is tiled floor.) But I was in such a panic that I couldn’t get a word out. The man didn’t look as if he’d appreciate my little joke at this moment anyway. In fact, he didn’t look as if he had a sense of humor at all. I took another step back and came up against a wall. The killer laughed out loud. Okay, so maybe he did have a sense of humor, but it wasn’t much like mine.

If the walls were cracking, I'd plastered the surface back to smoothness. If the floor tiles were crumbling, I'd replaced them. If the roof was leaking, I'd patched the leaks. I'd pretended that, because the “house” still appeared okay, all was okay. Nothing had changed; all had been fixed. Nothing else needed to change.

... I will take a long shower, as the shower is the only place I will have any privacy. In the stall I will get down on my knees and weep, letting the water run over my body, praying to get better, praying not to hurt myself any more than I’m already hurting, praying that this loss, that this whole time, will move over me, through me, like a dark storm passing over a great plane. A great plain which is, essentially, my soul. A soul which is neither light nor dark, neither wholly alone nor wholly with any other, certainly not with God, just flat, open, deathless, and free. Curled up in a wet ball on the tile floor I will hear myself say, something in me is dying. I no longer know to whom I’m talking.

Blood that smelled of wolf coated the rusty metal door, and prints that did not belong to a human stained the tile floor, aiming toward the stairs.

Lying flat against the tile of the kitchen floor listening to someone else have sex is essentially my early twenties in a nutshell.

My cat seeking a bed on the tiled floor Shakes his thin, mangy body ceaselessly; The soul of an old poet wanders in the rain-pipe With the sad voice of a shivering ghost.

The chair grates against the tile floor as I scoot backward against the door, and both of us wince, catch ourselves wincing, and laugh.

Sometimes I want to go back to the old flip phone. One of those old-people ones that they advertise on TV with the giant buttons like floor tiles.

His heart thudded rapidly behind its thick-boned prison, the pulse in his neck throbbing with anxiety. He almost smiled at that. If he weren’t a vampyre his parents, Phaedrus and Xanthippe, would consider him an impossibly delicious meal with that vein pulsing them into temptation. Instead they looked up at him in bewilderment, their mouths and chin smeared thick with the blood and skin of the unconscious man in their arms. They sat crowded together on one of the pillowed kline’s in the andron where his father held Symposia in their home. The man’s feet dragged to the floor, the light chiton he wore coming undone from the obvious struggle he had undergone at the hands of Kirios’ parents. Blood stained the fabric and ran in rivulets from his masticated neck to puddle on the mosaic floor. Kirios watched as it spread into the expensive tiling, wondering how on earth they would explain the stain.

But between the images, we are privy to the real-life action being played out on the set. Peeta’s attempt to continue speaking. The camera knocked down to record the white tiled floor.

Inside my best friend’s kitchen, blood spatters cover every surface—the kitchen table, including the pepper mill, the wall behind the table and much of the tile floor. Even their cat, Psycho, has a blood spatter across her white fur. My eyes, open wide with horror, take in each gruesome detail. Lying on the blood-spattered floor with a cleaver buried in his chest is my best friend’s dad, Mr. Taylor. He’s wearing his chef’s apron from Chez Gourmet, but the apron is more red than white. A trickle of blood leaks from the side of his mouth and drips into his beard, then onto the sticky floor.

Her heart, Bob Arctor reflected, was an empty kitchen: floor tile and water pipes and a drainboard with pale scrubbed surfaces, and one abandoned glass on the edge of the sink that nobody cared about.

In my light-headedness and fatigue, which made me feel drastically cut off from myself and as if I were observing it all at a remove, I walked past candy shops and coffee shops and shops with antique toys and Delft tiles from the 1800s, old mirrors and silver glinting in the rich, cognac-colored light, inlaid French cabinets and tables in the French court style with garlanded carvings and veneerwork that would have made Hobie gasp with admiration—in fact the entire foggy, friendly, cultivated city with its florists and bakeries and antiekhandels reminded me of Hobie, not just for its antique-crowded richness but because there was a Hobie-like wholesomeness to the place, like a children’s picture book where aproned tradespeople swept the floors and tabby cats napped in sunny windows. But there was much too much to see, and

When Mary Anne first started knitting, the sound reminded me of soft rain on a cozy night. After awhile, it was like mice skittering on a tile floor. Now I was thinking about skeleton bones rattling in a grave.

Once in school, going down to lunch from our third-floor classroom, Valentino Vail had leaned over the banister without warning and loosed a cataract of orange vomit. The stairway was the usual open stack and Valentino’s breakfast just dropped forever, three stories down, touching a good number of lives as it rocketed past and hitting the basement tile with a sound zookeepers must hear sometimes, around the elephants.

Sicarius padded toward the exit, his soft black boots silent on the tile floor. He paused in the doorway and glanced at the backs of the two older men. The emperor emitted a nervous chuckle. “You trained him too well, Hollow. The man bothers me.” “He is loyal.” “I know. You did a good job. I ought to give you Sespian to work with. The boy is disappointing.” “He does seem soft,” Hollowcrest said. “Did you hear that scream? I would’ve been fascinated by severed heads at that age.” “You’re fascinated with them now, Sire.” “True enough.” They shared a laugh and headed for the door. Sicarius slipped away before they noticed him.

What was it like to spend your whole day in rooms stuffed with thirty elementary school students and then have to come home, make dinner, and judge your kid’s fake diving competition? She’d been on her feet all day and now was crouched on the cold tile floor, I’m sure desperate for a comfy seat, warm food, and a cold beer, none of which were going to magically appear before her. These are important moments to remember. They aren’t small.

So, it wasn’t until I was living in Mexico that I first started enjoying chocolate mousse. See, there was this restaurant called La Lorraine that became a favorite of ours when John and I were living in Mexico City in 1964–65. The restaurant was in a beautiful old colonial period house with a large courtyard, red tile floors, and a big black and white portrait of Charles de Gaulle on the wall. The proprietor was a hefty French woman with grey hair swept up in a bun. She always welcomed us warmly and called us mes enfants, “my children.” Her restaurant was very popular with the folks from the German and French embassies located nearby. She wasn’t too keen on the locals. I think she took to us because I practiced my French on her and you know how the French are about their language! At the end of each evening (yeah, we often closed the joint) madame was usually seated at the table next to the kitchen counting up the evening’s receipts. Across from her at the table sat a large French poodle, wearing a napkin bib and enjoying a bowl of onion soup. Ah, those were the days… Oh, and her mousse au chocolate was to DIE for!

Nala pushed her lithe body from the desk and swept across the room, her stilettos clicking against the tiled floor. Her movements were as fluid and elegant as the gazelles that inhabited the grassy savannas in Africa. She stood silently in front of the open window, the chiffon curtains floating in the breeze around her. She presented an ethereal vision, which held Abayomi spellbound. Beautiful on the outside. Lethal on the inside, he thought to himself.

Yet attentiveness to detail is an even more critical foundation of professionalism than is any grand vision. First, it is through practice in the small that professionals gain proficiency and trust for practice in the large. Second, the smallest bit of sloppy construction, of the door that does not close tightly or the slightly crooked tile on the floor, or even the messy desk, completely dispels the charm of the larger whole. That is what clean code is about.

In Zen Buddhist texts they say, “You cannot nail a peg into the sky.” And so, to be a man of the sky, a man of the void, is also called ‘a man not depending on anything’. And when you’re not hung on anything you are the only thing that isn’t hung on anything – which is the universe. Which doesn’t hang, you see. Where would it hang? It has no place to fall on, even though it may be dropping; there will never be the crash of it landing on a concrete floor somewhere. But the reason for that is that it won’t crash below because it doesn’t hang above. And so there is a poem, in Chinese, which speaks of such a person as having above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground on which to stand.

When they first learned her diagnosis, the sisters had cried over it together. Sam felt shattered. That was back when she pictured pain as something swift and final. She understood better, now, what it actually was—not a glass dropped onto a tile floor, one terrible burst, but a tree required to grow over years in a space that limited it. Branches curled in on themselves, leaves dropping. A living thing that was forced, relentlessly, to submit. That was how sorrow acted on them.

The light is off, and it is dark. He has one hand pressed against the cold tiles of the wall above the toilet, and with his other hand he is taking aim, such as it is. He’s waiting for his prostate to get out of the way so he can take a well-deserved leak and get back to bed where he belongs, so that if by chance his heart stops this very second, he won’t be found—holding his pecker, dead on the floor—by a bunch of twenty-year-old medics who will gawk at his circumcision and bad luck.

He holds Willem so close that he can feel muscles from his back to his fingertips come alive, so close that he can feel Willem's heart beating against his, can feel his rib cage against his, and his stomach deflating and inflating with air. "Harder", Willem tells him, and he does until his arms grow first fatigued and then numb, until his body is sagging with tiredness, until he feels that he really is falling: first through the mattress, and then the bed frame, and then the floor itself, until he is sinking in slow motion through all the floors of the building, which yield and swallow him like jelly. Down he goes through the fifth floor, where Richard's family is now storing stacks of Moroccan tiles, down through the fourth floor which is empty, down through Richard and India's apartment, and Richard's studio, and then to the ground floor and into the pool, and then down and down, farther and farther, past the subway tunnels, past bedrock and silt, through underground lakes and oceans of oil, through layers of fossils and shale, until he is drifting into the fire at the earth's core. And the entire time, Willem is wrapped around him, and as they enter the fire, they aren't burned but melted into one being, their legs and chests and arms and heads fusing into one. When he wakes the next morning, Willem is no longer on top of him but beside him, but they are still intertwined, and he feels slightly drugged, and relieved, for he has not only not cut himself but he has slept, deeply, two things he hasn't done in months.

My primary duty was to lift the floor tile onto a shipping pallet and prepare that pallet for departure. It wasn’t easy, but it paid thirteen dollars an hour and I needed the money, so I took the job and collected as many overtime shifts and extra hours as I could.

Sicarius padded toward the exit, his soft black boots silent on the tile floor. He paused in the doorway and glanced at the backs of the two older men. The emperor emitted a nervous chuckle. “You trained him too well, Hollow. The man bothers me.” “He is loyal.” “I know.

He sat down on the cold tiled floor and leaned back against the fridge. As he reached for more paper, it was then that he imagine his wife`s hand instead. He closed his eyes. Felt her hand in his hand and the softness of her lips leaving a shimmering trail across his arm.

And the clubs everywhere, only just getting started, where even middle-aged married folk are sniffing lines of ketamine off black bathroom tile, and teenagers are dosing each other’s drinks. In the club, as he later recalls, a woman gets onto the dance floor and really lets go during a Madonna song, really takes over the floor, and people are clapping, hooting, she’s losing her mind out there, and her friends are calling her name: “Peter Pan! Peter Pan!” Actually, it isn’t a woman; it’s Arthur Less. Yes, even old American writers are dancing like it is still the eighties in San Francisco, like the sexual revolution has been won, like the war is over and Berlin has been liberated, one’s own self has been liberated; and what the Bavarian in his arms is whispering is true, and everyone, everyone—even Arthur Less—is loved.

Every inch of the interior space, high and low, glittered with arrangements of star-like patterns, all interwoven into a series of larger geometric shapes. The soaring domed ceilings glimmered from high above, a mirage of infinity that seemed to reach the heavens. Two large windows were thrown open to grant entrée to the sun: sharp shafts of light penetrated the room, further illuminating constellation after constellation of shattered glow. Even the floors were covered in mirrored tiles, though the delicate work was protected by a series of rich, intricately woven rugs.

My brain is made up of different rooms. Each room is for doing a different thing. For example, I have an Eyes Room for seeing things and an Ears Room for hearing things. I have a Hands Room, a Memory Room (it’s like my father’s office, full of drawers and folders and boxes with papers), a New Things Room, a Numbers Room (my favorite), and a Horror Room (I wish this room would be broken, but it works just fine). The rooms don’t touch each other. There are long, looping hallways in between each room. If I’m thinking about something that happened yesterday (like when I knocked over the white coffee mug), I’m in my Memory Room. But if I want to watch a Barney video on the TV, I have to leave the Memory Room and go into Eyes and sometimes Ears. Sometimes when I’m in the hallways traveling to a different room, I get lost and confused and caught In Between and feel like I’m nowhere. This is when my brain feels like maybe it’s a little bit broken, but I know I just have to find my way into one of the rooms and shut the door. But if too much is happening at once, I can get into trouble. If I’m counting the square tiles on the kitchen floor (180), I’m in my Numbers Room, but if my mother starts talking to me, I have to go into my Ears Room to hear her. But I want to stay in Numbers because I’m counting, and I like to count, but my mother keeps talking, and her sound is getting louder, and I feel pressure to leave Numbers and go inside my Ears Room. So I go into the hallway, but then she grabs my hand, and this surprises me and forces me into Hands, which isn’t where I wanted to go, and she’s talking to me but I can’t hear what she’s saying because I’m in my Hands Room and not in Ears. If she lets go of my hand, I can go into Ears. She’s saying, Look at me. But if I look at her, I have to leave Ears and go into Eyes, and then I won’t be able to hear what she’s saying. So I don’t know what to do, and I’m wandering the halls, and I can’t make a decision on where to go, and I’m In Between, and that’s when I get into trouble.

Today, she’s greeted by the sight of Benjy, one foot planted on the scuffed tile floor and one pointed over his head, gripping his leg with his left hand, which would be startling if it weren’t such a classic Benjy ambush. Being friends with him is like being friends with a very loud pretzel.

Later, I was in a bathroom stall. Eric was on his knees. My dick was in his mouth, my head back against warm ceramic tile that shook with the beat of the music. My fingers were in his hair and everything was hot and wet. I grunted a warning and he backed away, jacking me until I came on the dirty floor. He stood up and kissed me while he jerked himself off. He sighed into my mouth. He tasted like stale beer and mint. He came on his hand. I felt raw. “Thanks,” he said, zipping up his pants. “That was great.” “Sure,” I said, because I was unsure of what else to say. “You too.” And then he left. I

Glokta's walking made a steady rhythm on the grimy tiles of the floor. First the confident click of his right heel, then the tap of his cane, then the endless sliding of his left foot, with the familiar stabbing pains in the ankle, knee, arse and back. Click, tap, pain. That was the rhythm of his walking.

I’m certain I carry my mama and papa in my cells, but also the lavender, the orange blossoms, my mother’s sheets, my grandmother’s calculated footsteps, the toasted pecans, the clunk of the treacherous tile, the sugar caramelizing, the cajeta, the mad cicadas, the smells of old wood, and the polished clay floors.

It bugged him. He stepped back, stepped back some more so he saw the building proper and realized he had been here before. Back in the ’70s. The restaurant had been a community center or the like, legal aid, a view of the desks so you can see that everybody looks like you. Help you fill out the application for food stamps and other government programs, break down the discouraging bureaucratese, probably run by some former Panthers. He was still working for Horizon so it had to be the ’70s. Top floor, middle of summer, and the elevator was out. Humping up all that white-and-black hexagon tile, the steps worn from so many feet that they seemed to smile, a dozen smiles every floor.

Millions of microscopic fragments of Julia now lay, invisibly, on the speckled beige linoleum tiles of the classroom floor. What was left in her chair was a phantom of Julia, which she learned to project at these moments, by sheer force of will, until she could resemble herself, a process that would take days, even weeks, and was never entirely successful.

I’m taking this, Beckett. I did this. I could have just disabled them. But when I heard her say no I just…” Cole seemed resigned to his fate. “They were trying to rape her?” Beckett hit the wall with enough force to hear something crack—either a tile or a knuckle. “She said, ‘I do not want this,’ and they were all over her.” Cole glared at the men on the floor.

...She worked briskly and efficiently, taking her brush and pan from the drawing-room to the top of the stairs and making her way back down, a step at a time; after that she filled a bucket with water, fetched her kneeling-mat, and began to wash the hall floor. Vinegar was all she used. Soap left streaks on the black tiles. The first, wet rub was important for loosening the dirt, but it was the second bit that really counted, passing the wrung cloth over the floor in one supple, unbroken movement... There! How pleasing each glossy tile was. The gloss would fade in about five minutes as the surface dried; but everything faded. The vital thing was to make the most of the moments of brightness. There was no point dwelling on the scuffs.

But it was above all at mealtimes that she could bear it no longer, in that little room on the ground floor, with the smoking stove, the creaking door, the oozing walls, the damp floor-tiles; all the bitterness of life seemed to be served to her on her plate, and, with the steam from the boiled beef, there rose from the depths of her soul other exhalations as it were of disgust.

You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker umber thirty-two.

You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker number thirty-two.

The facade of the robatayaki looked like a leftover from the past…smoky-black tiles topped its wooden overhang…red, waxy paper lanterns lit it up…a noren curtain hung from a thin bamboo pole above the doorframe. Its sliding doors had rows of rectangular panes of glass. The robatayaki’s simplicity gave the impression of a one-story building, but eight floors of apartments rose up from it.

Can you really crush stone?” Angel asked. “Or was that a lie?” Without looking behind him, David slammed his fist into one of the marble columns. It cracked, and several chunks immediately crumbled loose to scatter to the tiled floor like crumbs of flaking pastry. “Elevators,” he said. “This way.” “Jesus Christ,” Angel said to Cassandra. “He doesn’t look scary, but he’s fucking terrifying.

The fasces was broken, but Nero remained alive and intact. Had all this been for nothing, then? At least he wasn’t gloating any more. Instead, the emperor sobbed in despair. ‘What have you done? Don’t you see?’ Only then did he begin to crumble. His fingers disintegrated. His toga frayed into smoke. A glittery cloud plumed from his mouth and nose, as if he were exhaling his life force along with his final breaths. Worst of all – this glitter didn’t simply vanish. It poured downward, seeping into the Persian rug, worming into cracks between the floor tiles, almost as if Nero were being pulled – clawed and dragged – into the depths, piece by piece. ‘You’ve given him victory,’ he whimpered. ‘You’ve –’ The last of his mortal form dissolved and soaked through the floor. Everyone in the room

You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg — that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'. Now, with every day that passes, another door seems to close, the one marked PROFESSIONAL STUNTMAN, or FIGHT EVIL ROBOT, until as the weeks go by and the doors — GET BITTEN BY SNAKE, SAVE WORLD FROM ASTEROID, DISMANTLE BOMB WITH SECONDS TO SPARE — keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn't necessarily need to be closed.

In one corner of the chamber, she saw the tip of a thick green vine force its way between the painted tiles, cracking them. More vines appeared next to the first; they poked through the wall from the outside and spread across the floor, covering it in a sea of writhing, snakelike appendages. Watching them crawl toward her, Nasuada began to chuckle. Is this all he can think of? I have stranger dreams nearly every night.

But I felt it now. Something was wrong, right here, very horribly wrong. I could picture Bob Nash sitting on the edge of Ann’s bed, trying to remember the last thing he said to his daughter. I saw Natalie’s mother, crying into one of her old T-shirts. I saw me, a despairing thirteen-year-old sobbing on the floor of my dead sister’s room, holding a small flowered shoe. Or Amma, thirteen herself, a woman-child with a gorgeous body and a gnawing desire to be the baby girl my mother mourned. My mother weeping over Marian. Biting that baby. Amma, asserting her power over lesser creatures, laughing as she and her friends cut through Natalie’s hair, the curls falling to the tile floor. Natalie, stabbing at the eyes of a little girl. My skin was screaming, my ears banged with my heartbeat. I closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around myself, and wept.

I hurried to the end of the Iron Wing and opened the door. Where I found myself face-to-face with Anne-Whatever-Whatever herself. I pulled my hand back to punch her. “What are you—” she started, when her eyes went wide and she collapsed on the ground, revealing Tasey in the hands of a teen boy with blond curls, blue eyes, dimples, and the most impish smile I’d ever seen. “Hey-oh, did you miss me?” Jack asked. Since my hand was already pulled back, I went ahead and punched Jack. “Bloody—What was that for?” he asked, hand over his nose. I stepped past the unconscious body of Anne-Whatever-Whatever lying on the white tile floor and snatched Tasey from the blond nightmare. “Are you kidding me? The last time I saw you, you left me for read.” “Well, yeah, there was that. But I thought rescuing you from IPCA might make up for it a bit.” “I’m in the middle of rescuing myself,” I snapped. “And how were you planning on getting past her?” He nudged the prone body with a none-too-gentle foot. “Improvising.” “And once you were past her, you were going to get out of here . . . how?” “Shut up!” I turned and tried to stomp down the hall, then cringed in pain from my ankle. Okay, no dramatic stomping. I opted for emphatic limping instead, which unfortunately allowed Jack to catch up quite quickly.

She locked the bathroom door and sat down on the floor in the loose T-shirt she had worn to bed, focusing on her breathing, on the feel of the cool tiles beneath her bare legs, observing, as she had been taught, the rapid beating of her heart, the adrenaline jolting through her veins, not fighting her panic, but watching it. After a while, she consciously noticed the faint smell of the lavender body wash she had used last night, and heard the distant passing of an airplane.

Cecil Winge’s room is a grim place. Furniture that must have come with the rental agreement is arranged along the walls. Few of Winge’s personal possessions can be seen. Books are piled in a stack, and there is a trunk. A simple desk stands by the window to catch the light, and spread over its surface is what looks like a partially deconstructed watch. Heat from the hearth below rises through the gaps in the floor and is the only source of warmth as the tiled stove has not yet been lit.

cafeteria, his heels clicking hollowly. Above, the fluorescents embedded in their long fixtures like inverted ice-cube trays threw a hard, shadowless light. There were more bodies. A man and a woman with their clothes off and holes in their heads. They screwed, Starkey thought, and then he shot her, and then he shot himself. Love among the viruses. The pistol, an army-issue .45, was still clutched in his hand. The tile floor was spotted with blood and gray stuff that looked like oatmeal.

There was a scream from inside. Drawing his sword, Haung crept up to the door and slid inside, merging with the shadows. The source of the scream was illuminated by the conjured light-ball in the centre of the room. Haung took in the scene and felt all strength flee from muscles. His arms fell limp by his side and the tip of his sword struck the tiled floor with a bright clink. From the rafters, two small bodies hung, rope tight round their necks, blackened tongues swelling from their mouths and sightless eyes staring into the void. Below the bodies of the two children, a naked woman, bruised body and bloody face sat staring at him. Blood pooled from between her knees and it was clear to Haung what had happened to her, and to her young children. She screamed again and again. Her eyes were desperate and disbelieving. Her claw fingered hands tore at her cheeks again and again. Ragged lines of blood dripped down her face, tears of madness and grief. Haung stared at her, unable to move.

Gregori tugged on her hair to force her back to him. "You make me feel alive, Savannah." "Do I? Is that why you're swearing?" She turned onto her stomach, propping herself up onto her elbows. He leaned into her, brushing his mouth across the swell of her breast. "You are managing to tie me up in knots. You take away all my good judgement." A slight smile curved her mouth. "I never noticed that you had particularly good judgement to begin with." His white teeth gleamed, a predator's smile, then sank into soft bare flesh. She yelped but moved closer to him when his tongue swirled and caressed, taking away the sting. "I have always had good judgement," he told her firmly, his teeth scraping back and forth in the valley between her breasts. "So you say.But that doesn't make it so. You let evil idiots shoot you with poisoned darts. You go by yourself into laboratories filled with your enemies. Need I go on?" Her blue eyes were laughing at him. Her firm, rounded bottom was far too tempting to resist. He brought his open palm down in mock punishment. Savannah jumped, but before she could scoot away, his palm began caressing, producing a far different effect. "Judging from our positions, ma petite, I would say my judgement looks better than yours." She laughed. "All right,I'm going to let you win this time." "Would you care for a shower?" he asked solicitously. When she nodded, Gregori flowed off the bed, lifted her high into his arms,and cradled her against his chest. There was something too innocent about him. She eyed him warily. But in an instant he had already glided across the tiled floor to the balcony door, which flew open at his whim, and carried her, naked, into the cold, glittering downpour. Savannah tried to squirm away, wiggling and shoving at his chest, laughing in spite of the icy water cascading over her. "Gregori! You're so mean. I can't believe you did this." "Well,I have poor judgement." He was grinning at her in mocking, male amusement. "Is that not what you said?" "I take it back!" she moaned, clinging to him, burying her fact on his shoulder as the chill rain pelted her bare breasts, making her nipples peak hard and fast. "Run with me tonight," Gregori whispered against her neck. An enticement. Temptation. Drawing her to him, another tie to his dark world. She lifted her head, looked into his silver eyes, and was lost.The rain poured over her, drenching her, but as Gregori slowly glided with her to the blanket of pine needles below the balcony,she couldn't look away from those hungry eyes.

He holds Willem so close that he can feel muscles from h9is back to his fingertips come alive, so close that he can feel Willem's heart beating against his, can feel his rib cage against his, and his stomach deflating and inflating with air. "Harder", Willem tells him, and he does until his arms grow first fatigued and then numb, until his body is sagging with tiredness, until he feels that he really is falling: first through the mattress, and then the bed frame, and then the floor itself, until he is sinking in slow motion through all the floors of the building, which yield and swallow him like jelly. Down he goes through the fifth floor, where Richard's family is now storing stacks of Moroccan tiles, down through the fourth floor which is empty, down through Richard and India's apartment, and Richard's studio, and then to the ground floor and into the pool, and then down and down, farther and farther, past the subway tunnels, past bedrock and silt, through underground lakes and oceans of oil, through layers of fossils and shale, until he is drifting into the fire at the earth's core. And the entire time, Willem is wrapped around him, and as they enter the fire, they aren't burned but melted into one being, their legs and chests and arms and heads fusing into one. When he wakes the next morning, Willem is no longer on top of him but beside him, but they are still intertwined, and he feels slightly drugged, and relieved, for he has not only not cut himself but he has slept, deeply, two things he hasn't done in months.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats — the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill — The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it — and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

In just two years, CSAS ignited the flame Grandmother lit years before. Carl would never succeed in his attempts to extinguish it. But his parental authority was able to keep it dormant and unthreatening for several years. At Ooltewah High School, I was like a lion forced into captivity after a liberating romp in the jungle. Nothing challenged me. Nothing motivated me. Nothing moved me. My claustrophobia itched to the point where clawing at my own skin seemed to be my only method of relief. With no social outlets and no intellectual nourishment, I caved into self-destruction. My bulimia amplified from throwing up obligatory family dinners to driving to grocery stores, Dollar Generals, and gas stations, shoving junk food into my purse in between security camera reach, devouring the calories in the corners of desolate parking lots, and scurrying into remote public restrooms in the outskirts of town. My knees would rest on the cold, sticky tile floors as I wrapped my arms around bleach-scented toilets as if embracing an old friend.

One Autumn night, in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside inn Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves Their crimson curtains rent and thin.” “As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall. A region of repose it seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills! For there no noisy railway speeds, Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds; But noon and night, the panting teams Stop under the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances on the sign. Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode Deep silence reigned, save when a gust Went rushing down the county road, And skeletons of leaves, and dust, A moment quickened by its breath, Shuddered and danced their dance of death, And through the ancient oaks o'erhead Mysterious voices moaned and fled. These are the tales those merry guests Told to each other, well or ill; Like summer birds that lift their crests Above the borders of their nests And twitter, and again are still. These are the tales, or new or old, In idle moments idly told; Flowers of the field with petals thin, Lilies that neither toil nor spin, And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse Hung in the parlor of the inn Beneath the sign of the Red Horse. Uprose the sun; and every guest, Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed For journeying home and city-ward; The old stage-coach was at the door, With horses harnessed, long before The sunshine reached the withered sward Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar Murmured: "Farewell forevermore. Where are they now? What lands and skies Paint pictures in their friendly eyes? What hope deludes, what promise cheers, What pleasant voices fill their ears? Two are beyond the salt sea waves, And three already in their graves. Perchance the living still may look Into the pages of this book, And see the days of long ago Floating and fleeting to and fro, As in the well-remembered brook They saw the inverted landscape gleam, And their own faces like a dream Look up upon them from below.

Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them.

Could I love everyone and even include bad people? I bowed my forehead into my clasped hands, feeling faint. Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labour of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain which is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes. When I opened my eyes I felt that I had understood something, and the cells of my body seemed to light up like millions of glowing points of contact, and I was aware of something profound. Then I stood up from my seat and collapsed.

In the silence, Kestrel heard a falling leaf scratch the glass of the window, opened out toward the dimming sky. It was warm, but summer was almost over. “Play your tiles,” Arin said roughly. Kestrel turned them over, taking no joy in the fact that she had surely won. She had four scorpions. Arin flipped his. The sound of ivory clacking against the wooden table was unnaturally loud. Four vipers. “I win,” he said, and swept the matches into his hand. Kestrel stared at the tiles, feeling a numbness creep along her limbs. “Well,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Well played.” He gave her a humorless smile. “I did warn you.” “Yes. You did.” He stood. “I think I’ll take my leave while I have the advantage.” “Until next time.” Kestrel realized she had offered him her hand. He looked at it, then took it in his own. She felt the numbness ebb, only to be replaced by a different kind of surprise. He dropped her hand. “I have things to do.” “Like what?” She tried for a lighthearted tone. He answered in kind. “Like contemplate what I am going to do with my sudden windfall of matches.” He widened his eyes in pretend glee, and Kestrel smiled. “I’ll walk you out,” she said. “Do you think I will lose my way? Or steal something as I go?” She felt her expression turn haughty. “I am leaving the villa anyway,” she said, though she had had no such plans until the words left her mouth. They walked in silence through the house until they had reached the ground floor. Kestrel saw his stride pause, almost imperceptibly, as they passed the closed doors that hid her piano. She stopped. “What is your interest in that room?” The look he gave her was cutting. “I have no interest in the music room.” Her eyes narrowed as she watched him walk away.

Nobody falls that way without being pushed. I know. And I know how it feels and looks, a body that falls fighting air all the way down, grabbing on to clumps of nothing and begging once, just once, just goddamn once, Jesus, you sniveling son of a mongrel bitch, just once that air gives a grip. And you land in a ditch five feet deep or on a marble-tiled floor sixteen feet down, still fighting when the floor rises up and smashes into you because it got tired of waiting for blood. And we’re still dead but we wake up, me a crushed spider, him a burned cockroach. I have no memory of coffins.

-and the house left its own echos in me. I carry them inside me still. I’m certain I carry my mama and papa in my cells, but also the lavender, the orange blossoms, my mother’s sheets, my grandmother’s calculated footsteps, the toasted pecans, the clunk of the treacherous tile, the sugar caramelizing, the cajeta, the mad cicadas, the smells of old wood, and the polished clay floors. I’m also made of oranges—green, sweet, or rotten; of orange-blossom honey and royal jelly. I’m made of everything that touched my senses during that time and entered the part of my brain where I keep my memories.

Six millennia ago, the air god Enlil and the sea god Enki settled themselves in the pantheon of Sumerian deities. The Sumerians believed the world was something like a snow globe. Enlil kept the air in the world together with lil, a mingling atmosphere that also lent luminosity to the sun and stars embellished on the inside of the snow globe. Behind the firmament was a deep sea, and Enki’s house was on the sea floor—a place called Abzu. It was a house made of colors that could not be seen, tiles of lapis lazuli, and encrustations of gems, most especially ruby and cornelian, that could not be crushed at those depths. The bowed cedar doors were hammered right with gold no brine could corrode. In this house Enki created a man. He mixed clay over the volcanic furnace, shaped it with heavy water, and swam it to the world. He breathed air into it there. The man failed. His body was weak. So was his spirit. According to the translation of Samuel Kramer of the University of Pennsylvania, the man was offered a piece of bread: “He does not reach out for it. He can neither sit nor stand nor bend his knees.” What is the lesson? That a man-creature created in the deep should stay there: in a house without light, without a hearth.

Sunday morning dawned bright and cloudless. Ernest awoke early as always. He put on the red "Emporor's robe" and padded softly down the carpeted stairway. The early sunlight lay in pools on the living room floor. He had noticed that the guns were locked up in the basement. But the keys, as he well knew, were on the window ledge above the kitchen sink. He tiptoed down the basement stairs and unlocked the storage room. It smelled as dank as a grave. He chose a double-barreled Boss shotgun with a tight choke. He had used it for years of pigeon shooting. He took some shells from one of the boxes in the storage room, closed and locked the door, and climbed the basement stairs. If he saw the bright day outside, it did not deter him. He crossed the living room to the front foyer, a shrinelike entryway five by seven feet, with oak-paneled walls and a floor of linoleum tile. He had held for years to the maxim: "il faut (d'abord) durer". Now it had been succeeded by another: "il faut (apres tout) mourir". The idea, if not the phrase, filled all his mind. He slipped in two shells, lowered the gun butt carefully to the floor, leaned forward, pressed the twin barrels against his forehead just above the eyebrows, and tripped both triggers.

He hadn’t even any satisfaction in the new water-cooler! And it was the very best of water-coolers, up-to-date, scientific, and right-thinking. It had cost a great deal of money (in itself a virtue). It possessed a nonconducting fiber ice-container, a porcelain water-jar (guaranteed hygienic), a drip-less non-clogging sanitary faucet, and machine-painted decorations in two tones of gold. He looked down the relentless stretch of tiled floor at the water-cooler, and assured himself that no tenant of the Reeves Building had a more expensive one, but he could not recapture the feeling of social superiority it had given him.

After history, which I occasionally enjoy, and French, which I tres don't, I have double art. The art studio hasn't been changed in, like, a hundred years. The floors are battered and creaky and covered with so many layers of dried paint that if looks like Jackson Pollock Was Here, minus the cigarette butts. Apparently, past generations of Willing Art Girls had tossed their cigarettes onto the tiled window well outside rather than onto the floor. "They were more ladylike," Cat Vernon told me once, pointing out the window beside her easle. The butts are gone, but there are burn marks, scattered like leopard spots,over the terra-cotta surface.

One Autumn night, in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside inn Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves Their crimson curtains rent and thin. As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall. A region of repose it seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills! For there no noisy railway speeds, Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds; But noon and night, the panting teams Stop under the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances on the sign. Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode Deep silence reigned, save when a gust Went rushing down the county road, And skeletons of leaves, and dust, A moment quickened by its breath, Shuddered and danced their dance of death, And through the ancient oaks o'erhead Mysterious voices moaned and fled. These are the tales those merry guests Told to each other, well or ill; Like summer birds that lift their crests Above the borders of their nests And twitter, and again are still. These are the tales, or new or old, In idle moments idly told; Flowers of the field with petals thin, Lilies that neither toil nor spin, And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse Hung in the parlor of the inn Beneath the sign of the Red Horse. Uprose the sun; and every guest, Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed For journeying home and city-ward; The old stage-coach was at the door, With horses harnessed,long before The sunshine reached the withered sward Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar Murmured: "Farewell forevermore. Where are they now? What lands and skies Paint pictures in their friendly eyes? What hope deludes, what promise cheers, What pleasant voices fill their ears? Two are beyond the salt sea waves, And three already in their graves. Perchance the living still may look Into the pages of this book, And see the days of long ago Floating and fleeting to and fro, As in the well-remembered brook They saw the inverted landscape gleam, And their own faces like a dream Look up upon them from below.

Nate craned his head to see. The woman was Dominika, dressed in a dark suit and dark stockings, a prison-visitor’s badge was around her neck, and it swung as she walked, her heels clicking unevenly against the white floor tiles because of her slight limp. It was like a dream seeing her now, here, like this. Her hair was up as always, and their eyes met for an instant. It would have been the most natural thing for her to walk up to his chair, kiss him on the lips, order his bonds cut, and walk him out of this basement and through the front gates while holding his hand. She’d give him some khren, some grief, like “Dushka, you cannot manage even this without my help?

One of the patients, a middle-aged woman, came out of her room every day and lay facedown on the tile floor, stayed there for hours, as doctors and nurses stepped around her. Morrie watched in horror. He took notes, which is what he was there to do. Every day, she did the same thing: came out in the morning, lay on the floor, stayed there until the evening, talking to no one, ignored by everyone. It saddened Morrie. He began to sit on the floor with her, even lay down alongside her, trying to draw her out of her misery. Eventually, he got her to sit up, and even to return to her room. What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want—someone to notice she was there.

The gnarled pine, I would have said, touch it. This is China. Horticulturalists around the world have come to study it. Yet no one has ever been able to explain why it grows like a corkscrew, just as no one can adequately explain China. But like that tree, there it is, old, resilient, and oddly magnificent. Within that tree are the elements in nature that have inspired Chinese artists for centuries: gesture over geometry, subtlety over symmetry, constant flow over static form. And the temples, walk and touch them. This is China. Don't merely stare at these murals and statues. Fly up to the crossbeams, get down on your hands and knees, and press your head to the floor tiles. Hide behind that pillar and come eye to eye with its flecks of paint. Imagine that you are the interior decorator who is a thousand years in age. Start with a bit of Tibetan Buddhism, plus a dash each of animism and Taoism. A hodgepodge, you say? No, what is in those temples is an amalgam that is pure Chinese, a lovely shabby elegance, a glorious new motley that makes China infinitely intriguing. Nothing is ever completely thrown away and replaced. If one period of influence falls out of favor, it is patched over. The old views still exist, one chipped layer beneath, ready to pop through with the slightest abrasion. That is the Chinese aesthetic and also its spirit. Those are the traces that have affected all who have traveled along China's roads.

Lady Kestrel?” said an anxious voice. Kestrel opened her eyes to see a girl dressed in a Herrani serving uniform. “Yes?” “Will you please follow me? There is a problem with your escort.” Kestrel stood. “What’s wrong?” “He has stolen something.” Kestrel rushed from the room, wishing the girl would move more quickly down the villa’s halls. There must be some mistake. Arin was intelligent, far too canny to do something so dangerous. He must know what happened to Herrani thieves. The girl led Kestrel into the library. Several men were gathered there: two senators, who held Arin by his arms, and Irex, whose expression when he saw Kestrel was gloating, as if he had just drawn a high tile in Bite and Sting. “Lady Kestrel,” he said, “what exactly did you bring into my house?” Kestrel looked at Arin, who refused to return her gaze. “He wouldn’t steal.” She heard something desperate in her voice. Irex must have, too. He smiled. “We saw him,” said one of the senators. “He was slipping that inside his shirt.” He nodded at a book that had fallen to the floor. No. The accusation couldn’t be true. No slave would risk a flogging for theft, not for a book. Kestrel steadied herself. “May I?” she asked Irex, nodding at the fallen book. He swept a hand to indicate permission. Kestrel stooped to retrieve the book, and Arin’s eyes flashed to hers. Her heart failed. His face was twisted with misery. She considered the closed, leather-bound book in her hands. She recognized the title: it was a volume of Herrani poetry, a common one. There was a copy in her library as well. Kestrel held the book, not understanding, not seeing anything worth the risk of theft--at least not here, from Irex’s library, when her own could easily serve Arin’s purposes. A suspicion whispered in her mind. She recalled Arin’s odd question in the carriage. Where are we going? His tone had been incredulous. Yet he had known their destination. Now Kestrel wondered if he had recognized something in the passing landscape that she hadn’t, and if his question had been less a question than the automatic words of someone sickened by a sudden understanding. She opened the book. “Don’t,” said Arin. “Please.” But she had already seen the inscription. For Arin, it read, from Amma and Etta, with love. This was Arin’s home. This house had been his, this library his, this book his, dedicated to him by his parents, some ten years ago.

it is the end of july and the idle breeze of gentle childhood befogs my mind once more, as the foreign dull heat holds my body so close i feel it’s scarce and quiet breathing brush against my stomach. i have not written since paris and i feel true in my youth at last. the sun strips me of my fatigued masquerading while summer feeds me plump peaches and wrinkly with ripeness figs ; softly reciting the writings of sylvia plath and patti smith. my bare feet greedily absorb the coolness of the cerulean tiles carpeting the guest bathroom floor. the sea covers my ears it’s waves plaiting my hair with the pacific touch of a mother lulling me to a somnolent state as the lenient light of the afternoon blinks through my fluttering eyes and the sparse flare of wind relieves the creases between my eyebrows.

Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them. The place is sprawling yet intimate. It is difficult to measure its breadth. Halls fold into rooms or galleries and stairs twist downward or upward to alcoves or arcades. Everywhere there are doors leading to new spaces and new stories and new secrets to be discovered and everywhere there are books.

Women! We’re going to blow the soot off you, clean the smoke from your nostrils, the din from your ears, we’re going to get you a potato that peels itself magically, in an instant, we’re going to give you back the hours the kitchen has stolen from you—you’re going to get half your life back. You, young wife, you cook your husband soup. You sacrifice half your day to a puddle of soup! We’re going to transform your puddles into shimmering seas, we’re going to ladle out cabbage soup by the ocean, pour kasha by the wheelbarrow, the blancmange is going to advance like a glacier! Listen, housewives, wait, this is what we’re promising you: the tile floor bathed in sunlight, the copper kettles burnished, the saucers lily-white, the milk as heavy as quicksilver, and the smells rising from the soup so heavenly they’ll be the envy of the flowers on your tables.

The Thwaites lived on Central Park West in the upper Eighties, in a building that, while manifestly grand, particularly to someone from Ohio, was by no means the most elegant among its neighbors. Its lobby, for one thing, was little more than a wide corridor, with two drably upholstered wing chairs propped against a wall and, between them, a glass table upon which rested an elaborate but unaesthetic arrangement of silk flowers. The light in the corridor was greenish, dim and lavatorial, barely illuminating the shallowly carved figures that marched, in pseudo-Egyptian fashion, along the pink stone tiles as far as the elevator. The floor, incongruously, was of a black and white parquet, upon which all but the softest slippers echoed ominously. And the elevator itself—paneled, with brass fixtures and a single tiny red velvet stool, presumably for its operator’s comfort—seemed again of a different, though no less ancient, era.

Sophie isn’t leaving,” Quentin asserted, his voice pure steel. “That woman sheds grace and light in every room she enters. Any man with a functional brain would try to catch a fragment of that grace and cherish it, rather than push her aside. I’m not sending her away. Were it in my power, I would cut the moon out of the sky and give it to her on a silver platter.” Her notebook dropped from her nerveless fingers, splatting open on the tile floor. Quentin whirled around to see her standing in the doorway. If he was embarrassed to have been overheard, he gave no sign of it. On the contrary, his eyes that had been sparking with anger gentled the instant he saw her. She glanced away, rocked by the protective expression on Quentin’s face. It shot straight to a vulnerable part deep inside and enveloped her with a sense of well-being. No man had ever spoken so passionately on her behalf, and a rush of wild, electrifying emotions stirred inside.

Paco is walking out of the bathroom and I rush past him. "You might want to wait before you--" Paco's voice fades as I close the door, locking myself in. Wiping my eyes, I gaze into the mirror. I'm a complete mess. My mascara is dripping and . . . oh, it's no use. I slide down and sit on the cold tile floor. Now I realize what Paco was about to tell me. The place stinks; it really reeks . . . almost to the point where I want to throw up. I put my hand over my nose, trying to ignore the offending smell. *** After locking the door behind him, he crouches beside me and takes me in his arms, pulling me close. Then he sniffs a few times. "Holy shit. Was Paco in here?" I nod. He smoothes my hair and mutters something in Spanish. *** She, too, sniffs a bunch of times. "Was Paco in here?" Alex and I nod. "What the fuck does that guy eat that it comes out his other end smelling so rotten? Dammit," she says, wadding up tissue and putting it over her nose.

She wraps her legs around my waist, and I walk us slowly down the hall. "Mmm, wait," she whines against my mouth. "I haven't showered. I'm so gross, and I don't..." She trails off as I turn into my bathroom, then set her down. She shuffles her bare feet against the gray stone tile, an inquisitive look on her face as she looks around the narrow space bathed in neutral hues. I push open the glass door and turn on the shower. Water cascades from the waterfall showered. "Oh," she says as she grins and bites her bottom lip. By the time we've helped each other out of our clothes, the water's warm. I help her in first, then step in. And then, under the hot stream of water, we resume our dirty kissing and grabbing. "Wait, wait." She presses a hand against my chest, then reaches for the shampoo bottle on the ledge. "I do need to get clean first." I laugh and follow her lead by shampooing my own hair and doing a quick rinse with body wash. She holds her hand out for the loofah, but I shake my head. "Let me?" A devilish smirk tugs at her perfect mouth. When she nods and licks her lips, I have to take a second. God, this woman. The way she's sweet and filthy all at once is enough to make me lose it right here. But I refuse. Not before she gets what I'm dying to give her. I work up a lather and run the loofah all over her body. I take my time, paying attention to every part of her. These beautifully curved hips, the fullness of her thighs, the gentle curve of her waist, her arms, her hands, the swell of her boobs. And then I lather up my hands and slowly work between her legs. She clutches both hands around my biceps, and her toes curl against the earthen-hued river rock that lines the shower floor. Her eyes go wide and pleading as she looks up at me. I lean down to kiss her. "Tell me what you want." "You. Just you. Please." With her breathy request, I'm ready to burst. Not yet, though. She reaches down to palm me, but I gently push her hand away. I want this to be one hundred percent about her. When she presses her mouth against my shoulder and her sounds go louder and more frantic, I work my hand faster. She's panting, pleading, shouting. When I feel the sting of her teeth against my skin, I grin. Fuck yeah, my girl is rough when she loses it and I love it. I love her. She explodes against my palm, the weight of her body shuddering against me. I've got her, though. I've always, always got you. When she starts to ease back down, she lets out a breathy laugh. "Oh my god." I nod down at her, which only makes her laugh harder. Then she glances down at what I'm sporting between my legs and flashes a naughty smirk. "Let's do something about that." Soon it's me at the mercy of her hands. My head spins at the pleasure she delivers so confidently, like she knows every single one of my buttons to push. When I lose it, I'm shuddering and grunting. For a few seconds, my vision's blurry. She's that incredible.

At this point the reader should be warned that the argument here developed would not be accepted by all schools of psychology. The Gestalt school would have none of it. The pioneers of this important movement want to minimize the role of learning and experience in perception. They think that our compulsion to see the tiled floor, or the letters, not as irregular units in the plane but as regular units arranged in depth is far too universal and too compelling to be attributed to learning. Instead they postulate an inborn tendency of our brain. Their theory centers on the electrical forces which come into play in the cortex during the process of vision. It is these forces, they claim, that tend toward simplicity and balance and make our perception always weighted, as it were, in favor of geometrical simplicity and cohesion. A flat, regularly tiled floor is simpler than the complex pattern of rhomboids in the plane, hence it is a flat, regularly tiled floor we actually see.

That was when Matthew punched him. It amazed him, the punch. Not the shape of the blow. Niall had taught all the boys to box when they were much younger, and although Matthew hadn't used this knowledge until then, it turned out his hands and arms and shoulders still remembered it in some deep, subconscious way. No, what amazed Matthew about the punch was that it appeared at all. The fact that his hand made a fist and the fist took a journey and the journey ended on Declan's face. The punch knocked Declan right off his stool and onto his back on the tile floor, fancy brogues pointing at the ceiling light. It knocked the breath right out of him (Matthew heard it) and it knocked the car keys right out of his pocket (Matthew saw it). A second later, his spilled coffee cup rolled off the counter and joined him on the floor with a clatter. It amazed Matthew that his hand, right after punching Declan, snatched the car keys off the floor. It was like he was a whole different person. It was like he was Ronan. "How do you like it?!" Matthew shouted daringly.

Manec’s room. They go slowly; maybe it’s dark. Could it already be night? Four or five or six or a million heartbeats roll by. She has her cane, Etienne’s coat, the two cans, the knife, the brick. Model house in her dress pocket. The stone inside that. Water in the tub at the end of the hall. Move. Go. A pot or pan, presumably knocked off its hook in the bombing, wobbles on the kitchen tiles. He exits the kitchen. Returns to the foyer. Stand, ma chérie. Stand up now. She stands. With her right hand, she finds the railing. He is at the base of the stairs. She almost cries out. But then she recognizes—just as he sets his foot on the first stair—that his stride is out of rhythm. One-pause-two one-pause-two. It is a walk she has heard before. The limp of a German sergeant major with a dead voice. Go. Marie-Laure takes each step as deliberately as she can. Grateful now that she does not have her shoes. Her heart knocks so furiously against the cage of her chest that she feels certain the man below will hear it. Up to the fourth floor. Each step a whisper. The fifth. On the sixth-floor landing, she pauses beneath the chandelier and

Do you know, I was rather excited about this whole weekend, and now I can't wait to get home. Feed the cats, write school papers. That sort of thing." Tabitha said nothing. She had no home to return to. "Don't you want to go home? That's right, though, you said you would be leaving the country." "Just my parents are leaving. I'm orphanage bound," Tabitha told him, studying the kitchen tiles. "I'm to be a washer girl at Augustus Home." "A washer girl?" Oliver blinked, incredulous. "You can't mean it." Tabitha kept her eyes focused on the red squares, observing how they fit neatly together to form a single unit of floor. Her parents had taken away her ability to fit in anywhere. She felt the boiling sensation in her belly again, and she finally recognized it. It wasn't sadness or fear or guilt. It was anger, and it wanted very badly to be released. "No, I don't believe you." Oliver shook his head. "Nobody is that horrible." "They are," Tabitha affirmed quietly. "They are horrible, horrible people and even worse parents." She stared at him in wonder, letting a hot rush course through her. "Do you know that's the first time I've said that aloud?" Her heartbeat quickened. "And I think perhaps they deserve my disfavor. They've earned it, the same way I tried for years to earn their love.

We did every part of this renovation together with our bare hands. Chip restored all of the wood floors, all the tile work--everything. I was learning as we went, but I definitely did my part. That house was gorgeous. Jo did an awesome job helping fix it up, and her ideas were great. There was a moment in the kitchen when I smarted off, though. I don’t even remember what I said, to be honest, but Jo got real mad and started yelling. She was carrying this five-gallon bucket of primer. She slammed it down on the ground to make a point, and it splashed right back up in her face. It was dripping off her eyelashes and her nose. Whenever something like that happened in my family, we’d all just laugh, you know? So I laughed, even though she was mad at me, and that made her even angrier. She started yelling again with the primer dripping all over, and I just had this moment where I looked at her and everything seemed to be going in slow motion and I thought, I love this woman. She is tough! Oh, this is gonna work. That was our first real “fight,” and even now we both agree it was our biggest. Chip had smarted off about something, so my blood was already boiling, but when I slammed that bucket down, Chip says I became a ninja--the kind you don’t want to mess with. Yet he still laughed, against his better judgment. We joke about it now, like, “Well, I’m mad, but I’m not primer-in-the-face mad.

At a time when moguls vied to impress people with their possessions, Rockefeller preferred comfort to refinement. His house was bare of hunting trophies, shelves of richly bound but unread books, or other signs of conspicuous consumption. Rockefeller molded his house for his own use, not to awe strangers. As he wrote of the Forest Hill fireplaces in 1877: “I have seen a good many fireplaces here [and] don’t think the character of our rooms will warrant going into the expenditures for fancy tiling and all that sort of thing that we find in some of the extravagant houses here. What we want is a sensible, plain arrangement in keeping with our rooms.”3 It took time for the family to adjust to Forest Hill. The house had been built as a hotel, and it showed: It had an office to the left of the front door, a dining room with small tables straight ahead, upstairs corridors lined with cubicle-sized rooms, and porches wrapped around each floor. The verandas, also decorated in resort style, were cluttered with bamboo furniture. It was perhaps this arrangement that tempted John and Cettie to run Forest Hill as a paying club for friends, and they got a dozen to come and stay during the summer of 1877. This venture proved no less of a debacle than the proposed sanatorium. As “club guests,” many visitors expected Cettie to function as their unlikely hostess. Some didn’t know they were in a commercial establishment and were shocked upon returning home to receive bills for their stay.

We’ll go out tomorrow morning, then. First thing,” she ventures, more to Silas than me. “Though how the hell are we supposed to hunt? The Fenris certainly can’t see my face, and he’ll recognize Rosie. We’ve got no bait, unless you think you’ll look pretty in a dress, Silas.” “Okay, one, I would look great in a dress,” Silas begins. He turns to lean against the bathroom door, seemingly forgetting that I’m still in a towel. When he sees me, he averts his eyes and flushes a little. “And two,” he continues in a forced voice, “you’ve been luring Fenris on your own for pages, Scarlett. The Apple Time Festival is tomorrow. Perfect place for a Fenris to hang out, even if you don’t take into account all the red people will be wearing. We’ll go there.” Scarlett nods curtly. No one moves for a few minutes as water continues to trickle off my back and onto the shower floor. Finally, Scarlett gives me another cold look, turns on her heel, and storms down the hall. “Sorry I got you in trouble,” Silas whispers guiltily, his voice the only sound other than the steady pattering of water hitting the tile floor. “I was worried about you when you took off, and then I realized it was probably your first solo . . .” I shake my head. “I had to tell her eventually.” “For what it’s worth,” he says, eyes still averted respectfully, “I thought you did great.” “Thanks, Silas.” He finally meets my eyes, keeping his gaze firmly on my face. I tug the towel a little tighter. “You’re welcome. And I’m sorry for barging in. I didn’t . . . um, see anything. I promise.

He turned around and looked at her, in this instance, in precisely the same way that, at one time or another, in one year or another, all his brothers and sisters (and especially his brothers) had turned around and looked at her. Not just with objective wonder at the rising of a truth, fragmentary or not, up through what often seemed to be an impenetrable mass of prejudices, cliches, and bromides. But with admiration, affection, and, not least, gratitude. And, oddly or no, Mrs. Glass invariably took this ‘tribute,’ when it came, in beautiful stride. She would look back with grace and modesty at the son or daughter who had given her the look. She now presented this gracious and modest countenance to Zooey. ‘You do,’ she said, without accusation in her voice. ‘Neither you nor Buddy know how to talk to people you don't like.’ She thought it over. ‘Don't love, really,’ she amended. And Zooey continued to stand gazing at her, not shaving. ‘It's not right,’ she said—gravely, sadly. ‘You're getting so much like Buddy used to be when he was your age. Even your father's noticed it. If you don't like somebody in two minutes, you're done with them forever.’ Mrs. Glass looked over, abstractedly, at the blue bathmat, across the tiled floor. Zooey stood as still as possible, in order not to break her mood. ‘You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes,’ Mrs. Glass said to the bathmat, then turned again toward Zooey and gave him a long look, with very little, if any, morality in it. ‘Regardless of what you may think, young man,’ she said.

Korie: Ray’s daughter, Rachel, and I were best friends, and they were going to Phil’s house for dinner one night. They invited me to go along. I still remembered Willie from camp, so needless to say, I was just dying to go. I begged my parents to let me go with them. They said yes! I even remember what I wore at Willie’s house-a black top with fluorescent green earrings. Don’t judge…it was the eighties. When Rachel and I got to the Robertsons’ house, the first thing Phil said to us was: “Have you met my boys, Jason Silas and Willie Jess? They’ll make good husbands someday. They’re good hunters and fisherman.” I was so nervous. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The other thing I remember about walking in their home was that Phil and Kay had a sign on the door that said, “Honeymoon in progress.” Phil and Kay have never been shy about their honeymooning…another thing that shocked me about their family. Once we had eaten, Willie took us back to his room, which was actually the laundry room. He made us laugh the whole time. He would stick his thumb in his mouth and pretend that he was blowing up his muscles. He did acupressure tricks and showed us our pressure points. This was all very impressive to a couple of fifth-grade girls. After a while, I decided I was going to try to really impress Korie. I started punching the tiles on the ceiling of the laundry room, which was a trick one of my buddies taught me. I’d rear back and just punch my fist through the ceiling and busted tile would fall over onto the floor. I’m sure she was really impressed.

The walk is over too quickly. Tally tries everything she can think of to make it last longer, suggesting that Rupert needs to be taken all around the park and then play some stick-chasing games. But after twenty minutes, Mum says that it’s time to head home. “He’s an old dog,” she tells Tally. “And he had quite a fright yesterday. He’ll be happiest having a sleep on his bed now, while we pop out for a while.” “Can’t Nell and I stay here?” Tally asks, the second they’re inside the house. Mum shakes her head. “Not today. After yesterday’s escapades I think that I want us all to stick together. And besides, Dad is looking forward to seeing you.” “I can’t wait to see him,” says Nell, and Tally wonders how she can be so brave about going to the hospital but so scared about something as silly as the dark. Just like the dog walk, the drive to the hospital doesn’t take long enough. Mum parks the car and they all get out. Tally stares at the building ahead. It is grey and gloomy and huge and she knows that if she were to get lost in there then she’d never find her way out. “This way,” says Mum, leading them towards the main entrance. They walk past a man sitting in a wheelchair and a woman with her arm in a sling, and Tally lowers her eyes so that the only thing she can see is Mum’s feet in front of her. The ground changes from concrete to tiles and then Mum’s feet stop and Tally has to look up There are people everywhere and the lights are so bright that it hurts her eyes. “Dad is on the fifth floor,” mum says. “So we need to take the lift.” Tally steps back, accidentally bumping into Nell.

When we first started dating, my talent in the kitchen was a turn-on. The prospect of me in the kitchen, wearing a skimpy apron and holding a whisk in my hand- he thought that was sexy. And, as someone with little insight into how to work her own sex appeal, I pounced on the opportunity to make him want and need me. I spent four days preparing my first home-cooked meal for him, a dinner of wilted escarole salad with hot bacon dressing, osso bucco with risotto Milanese and gremolata, and a white-chocolate toasted-almond semifreddo for dessert. At the time, I lived with three other people in a Columbia Heights town house, so I told all of my housemates to make themselves scarce that Saturday night. When Adam showed up at my door, as the rich smell of braised veal shanks wafted through the house, I greeted him holding a platter of prosciutto-wrapped figs, wearing nothing but a slinky red apron. He grabbed me by the waist and pushed me into the kitchen, slowly untying the apron strings resting on my rounded hips, and moments later we were making love on the tiled kitchen floor. Admittedly, I worried the whole time about when I should start the risotto and whether he'd even want osso bucco once we were finished, but it was the first time I'd seduced someone like that, and it was lovely. Adam raved about that meal- the rich osso bucco, the zesty gremolata, the sweet-and-salty semifreddo- and that's when I knew cooking was my love language, my way of expressing passion and desire and overcoming all of my insecurities. I learned that I may not be comfortable strutting through a room in a tight-fitting dress, but I can cook one hell of a brisket, and I can do it in the comfort of my own home, wearing an apron and nothing else. Adam loved my food, and he loved watching me work in the kitchen even more, the way my cheeks would flush from the heat of the stove and my hair would twist into delicate red curls along my hairline. As the weeks went by, I continued to seduce him with pork ragu and roasted chicken, creamed spinach and carrot sformato, cannolis and brownies and chocolate-hazelnut cake.

Trying to trick the creature, hoping that it would react without hesitation to the first sign of movement in the door way, Travis tucked the revolver under his belt, quietly picked up one of the dining-room chairs, eased to within six feet of the kitchen, and pitched the chair through the open door. He snatched the revolver out of his waistband and, as the chair sailed into the kitchen, assumed a shooter's stance. The chair crashed into the Formica-topped table, clattered to the floor, and banged against the dishwasher. The lantern-eyed enemy did not go for it. Nothing moved. When the chair finished tumbling, the kitchen was again marked by a hushed expectancy . Einstein was making a curious sound, a quiet shuddery huffing, and after a moment Travis realized the noise was a result of the dog's uncontrollable shivering. No question about it: the intruder in the kitchen was the very thing that had pursued them through the woods more than three months ago. During the intervening weeks, it had made its way north, probably traveling mostly in the wildlands to the east of the developed part of the state, relentlessly tracking the dog by some means that Travis could not understand and for reasons he could not even guess. In response to the chair he had thrown, a large white-enameled canister crashed to the floor just beyond the kitchen doorway, and Travis jumped back in surprise, squeezing off a wild shot before he realized he was only being taunted. The lid flew off the container when it hit the floor, and flour spilled across the tile. Silence again. By responding to Travis's taunt with one of its own, the intruder had displayed unnerving intelligence. Abruptly Travis realized that, coming from the same research lab as Einstein and being a product of related experiments, the creature might be as smart as the retriever. Which would explain Einstein's fear of it. If Travis had not already accommodated himself to the idea of a dog with humanlike intelligence, he might have been unable to credit this beast with more than mere animal cleverness; however, events of the past few months had primed him to accept-and quickly adapt to-almost anything.

Can you just imagine the two of them next year at the Phi Delta Carnation Ball?” Laura Grace asks, clapping her hands together. Daddy looks confused. “The two of who?” “Why, Ryder and Jemma, of course.” Mama pats him on the hand. “You remember the Carnation Ball--it’s the first Phi Delta party of the year. They have to go together, right, Laura Grace?” She nods. “We’ve been waiting all our lives for this.” Mama finally glances my way and sees my scowl. “Aw, honey. We’re just teasing, that’s all.” This sort of teasing has been going on my entire life--second verse, same as the first. It’s gotten real old, real fast. “May I be excused?” I ask, pushing back from the table. “You go on and finish your dinner,” Laura Grace says, entirely unperturbed. “We’ll stop teasing. I promise.” “It’s okay. I’m done. It was delicious, thanks. I just need to get some air, that’s all. I’m getting a bit of a headache.” Laura Grace nods. “It’s this heat--way too hot for September.” She waves a hand in my direction. “Go on, then. Ryder, why don’t you go get Jemma some aspirin or something.” I glance over at Ryder, and our eyes meet. I shake my head, hoping he gets the message. “No, it’s fine. I’m…uh…I’ve got some in my purse.” “Go with her, son,” Mr. Marsden prods. “Be a gentleman, and get her a bottle of water to take outside with her.” Ugh. I give up. My escape plot is now ruined. Wordlessly, Ryder rises from the table and stalks out of the dining room. I follow behind, my sandals slapping noisily against the hardwood floor. “Do you want water or not?” he asks me as soon as the door swings shut behind us. “Sure. Fine. Whatever.” He turns to face me. “It is pretty hot out there.” “I near about melted on the drive over.” His lips twitch with the hint of a smile. “Your dad refused to turn on the AC, huh?” I nod as I follow him out into the cavernous marble-tiled foyer. “You know his theory--‘no point when you’re just going down the road.’ Must’ve been a thousand degrees in the car.” He tips his head toward the front door. “You wait out on the porch--I’ll bring you a bottle of water.” “Thanks.” I watch him go, wondering if we’re going to pretend like last night’s fight didn’t happen. I hope that’s the case, because I really don’t feel like rehashing it.

I didn’t think we were being quiet, particularly. High heels may have looked dainty, but they didn’t sound that way on a tile floor. Maybe it was just that my dad was so absorbed in the convo on his cell phone. For whatever reason, when we emerged from the kitchen into the den, he started, and he stuffed the phone down by his side in the cushions. I was sorry I’d startled him, but it really was comical to see this big blond manly man jump three feet off the sofa when he saw two teenage girls. I mean, it would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. Dad was a ferocious lawyer in court. Out of court, he was one of those Big Man on Campus types who shook hands with everybody from the mayor to the alleged ax murderer. A lot like Sean, actually. There were only two things Dad was afraid of. First, he wigged out when anything in the house was misplaced. I won’t even go into all the arguments we’d had about my room being a mess. They’d ended when I told him it was my room, and if he didn’t stop bugging me about it, I would put kitchen utensils in the wrong drawers, maybe even hide some (cue horror movie music). No spoons for you! Second, he was easily startled, and very pissed off afterward. “Damn it, Lori!” he hollered. “It’s great to see you too, loving father. Lo, I have brought my friend Tammy to witness out domestic bliss. She’s on the tennis team with me.” Actually, I was on the tennis team with her. “Hello, Tammy. It’s nice to meet you,” Dad said without getting up or shaking her hand or anything else he would normally do. While the two of them recited a few more snippets of polite nonsense, I watched my dad. From the angle of his body, I could tell he was protecting that cell phone behind the cushions. I nodded toward the hiding place. “Hot date?” I was totally kidding. I didn’t expect him to say, “When?” So I said, “Ever.” And then I realized I’d brought up a subject that I didn’t want to bring up, especially not while I was busy being self-absorbed. I clapped my hands. “Okay, then! Tammy and I are going upstairs very loudly, and after a few minutes we will come back down, ringing a cowbell. Please continue with your top secret phone convo.” I turned and headed for the stairs. Tammy followed me. I thought Dad might order me back, send Tammy out, and give me one of those lectures about my attitude (who, me?). But obviously he was chatting with Pamela Anderson and couldn’t wait for me to leave the room. Behind us, I heard him say, “I’m so sorry. I’m still here. Lori came in. Oh, yeah? I’d like to see you try.” “He seems jumpy,” Tammy whispered on the stairs. “Always,” I said. “Do you have a lot of explosions around your house?” I glanced at my watch. “Not this early.

A dark-haired young woman was waiting in the atrium by the fountain. When she saw Arin, her face filled with light and tears. He almost ran across the short space between them to gather her in his arms. “Sister or lover?” Kestrel said. The woman looked up from their embrace. Her expression hardened. She stepped away from Arin. “What?” “Are you his sister or lover?” She walked up to Kestrel and slapped her across the face. “Sarsine!” Arin hauled her back. “His sister is dead,” Sarsine said, “and I hope you suffer as much as she did.” Kestrel’s fingers went to her cheek to press against the sting--and cover a smile with the heels of her tied hands. She remembered the bruises on Arin when she had bought him. His surly defiance. She had always wondered why slaves brought punishment upon themselves. But it had been sweet to feel a tipping of power, however slight, when that hand had cracked across her face. To know, despite the pain, that for a moment Kestrel had been the one in control. “Sarsine is my cousin,” Arin said. “I haven’t seen her in years. After the war, she was sold as a house slave. I was a laborer, so--” “I don’t care,” Kestrel said. His shadowed eyes met hers. They were the color of the winter sea--the water far below Kestrel’s feet when she had looked down and imagined what it would be like to drown. He broke the gaze between them. To his cousin he said, “I need you to be her keeper. Escort her to the east wing, let her have the run of the suite--” “Arin! Have you lost your mind?” “Remove anything that could be a weapon. Keep the outermost door locked at all times. See that she wants for nothing, but remember that she is a prisoner.” “In the east wing.” Sarsine’s voice was thick with disgust. “She’s the general’s daughter.” “Oh, I know.” “A political prisoner,” Arin said. “We must be better than the Valorians. We are more than savages.” “Do you truly think that keeping your clipped bird in a luxurious cage will change how the Valorians see us?” “It will change how we see ourselves.” “No, Arin. It will change how everyone sees you.” He shook his head. “She’s mine to do with as I see fit.” There was an uneasy rustle among the Herrani. Kestrel’s heart sickened. She kept trying to forget this: the question of what it meant to belong to Arin. He reached for her, pulling her firmly toward him as her boots dragged and squeaked against the tiles. With the flick of a knife, he cut the bonds at her wrists, and the sound of leather hitting the floor was loud in the atrium’s acoustics--almost as loud as Sarsine’s choked protest. Arin let Kestrel go. “Please, Sarsine. Take her.” His cousin stared at him. Eventually, she nodded, but her expression made clear that she thought he was indulging in something disastrous.

So, you want to improve your home like you have some knowledge and respect for the endeavor, yes? Very well. First, you need to know the basics associated with it to showcase what type of knowledge you actually have about it. If that is not enough, try reviewing the article listed below to assist you. Home improvement is often a daunting task. This is because of the time and the amounts of money required. However, it doesn't have to be so bad. If you have several projects in your house, divide them up into several smaller DIY projects. For example you may want to redo the entire living room. Start simple, by just replacing the carpet, and before you know it, your living room will be like new. One great way to make the inside of your home sparkle is to put new molding in. New molding helps create a fresh sense in your living space. You can purchase special molding with beautiful carvings on them to add a unique touch of elegance and style to your home. When it comes to home improvement, consider replacing your windows and doors. This not only has a chance of greatly improving the value of the home, but may also severely decrease the amount of money required to keep your house warm and dry. You can also add extra security with new doors and windows. Change your shower curtain once a month. Showering produces excessive humidity in a bathroom that in turn causes shower curtains to develop mold and mildew. To keep your space fresh and healthy, replace your curtains. Don't buy expensive plastic curtains with hard to find designs, and you won't feel bad about replacing it. Sprucing up your walls with art is a great improvement idea, but it doesn't have to be a painting. You can use practically anything for artwork. For instance, a three-dimensional tile works great if you contrast the colors. You can even buy some canvas and a frame and paint colored squares. Anything colorful can work as art. If you are renovating your kitchen but need to spend less money, consider using laminate flooring and countertops. These synthetic options are generally much less expensive than wood, tile, or stone. They are also easier to care for. Many of these products are designed to closely mimic the natural products, so that the difference is only visible on close inspection. New wallpaper can transform a room. Before you add wallpaper, you need to find out what type of wall is under the existing wallpaper. Usually walls are either drywall or plaster smoothed over lath. You can figure out what kind of wall you are dealing with by feeling the wall, plaster is harder, smoother, and colder than drywall. You can also try tapping the wall, drywall sounds hollow while plaster does not. Ah, you have read the aforementioned article, or you wouldn't be down here reading through the conclusion. Well done! That article should have provided you with a proper foundation of what it takes to properly and safely improve your home. If any questions still remain, try reviewing the article again.

As Frank promised, there was no other public explosion. Still. The multiple times when she came home to find him idle again, just sitting on the sofa staring at the rug, were unnerving. She tried; she really tried. But every bit of housework—however minor—was hers: his clothes scattered on the floor, food-encrusted dishes in the sink, ketchup bottles left open, beard hair in the drain, waterlogged towels bunched on bathroom tiles. Lily could go on and on. And did. Complaints grew into one-sided arguments, since he wouldn’t engage. “Where were you?” “Just out.” “Out where?” “Down the street.” Bar? Barbershop? Pool hall. He certainly wasn’t sitting in the park. “Frank, could you rinse the milk bottles before you put them on the stoop?” “Sorry. I’ll do it now.” “Too late. I’ve done it already. You know, I can’t do everything.” “Nobody can.” “But you can do something, can’t you?” “Lily, please. I’ll do anything you want.” “What I want? This place is ours.” The fog of displeasure surrounding Lily thickened. Her resentment was justified by his clear indifference, along with his combination of need and irresponsibility. Their bed work, once so downright good to a young woman who had known no other, became a duty. On that snowy day when he asked to borrow all that money to take care of his sick sister in Georgia, Lily’s disgust fought with relief and lost. She picked up the dog tags he’d left on the bathroom sink and hid them away in a drawer next to her bankbook. Now the apartment was all hers to clean properly, put things where they belonged, and wake up knowing they’d not been moved or smashed to pieces. The loneliness she felt before Frank walked her home from Wang’s cleaners began to dissolve and in its place a shiver of freedom, of earned solitude, of choosing the wall she wanted to break through, minus the burden of shouldering a tilted man. Unobstructed and undistracted, she could get serious and develop a plan to match her ambition and succeed. That was what her parents had taught her and what she had promised them: To choose, they insisted, and not ever be moved. Let no insult or slight knock her off her ground. Or, as her father was fond of misquoting, “Gather up your loins, daughter. You named Lillian Florence Jones after my mother. A tougher lady never lived. Find your talent and drive it.” The afternoon Frank left, Lily moved to the front window, startled to see heavy snowflakes powdering the street. She decided to shop right away in case the weather became an impediment. Once outside, she spotted a leather change purse on the sidewalk. Opening it she saw it was full of coins—mostly quarters and fifty-cent pieces. Immediately she wondered if anybody was watching her. Did the curtains across the street shift a little? The passengers in the car rolling by—did they see? Lily closed the purse and placed it on the porch post. When she returned with a shopping bag full of emergency food and supplies the purse was still there, though covered in a fluff of snow. Lily didn’t look around. Casually she scooped it up and dropped it into the groceries. Later, spread out on the side of the bed where Frank had slept, the coins, cold and bright, seemed a perfectly fair trade. In Frank Money’s empty space real money glittered. Who could mistake a sign that clear? Not Lillian Florence Jones.

There you are.” “Nya.” The cat mewled as he lifted her up and carried her to the dining room, where he set her down on the floor. He fetched a bowl and set it on the tile, then poured some milk into it. “I hope you like milk.” “Nya!” Kevin wasn’t sure, but he could’ve sworn he saw stars appear in the thing’s big yellow eyes. He shook his head. Must be my imagination.

We drilled our drinks onto the checkered-tile floor. And for that moment, at least, I felt like the luckiest man alive.

most of which Gloria and I undertook by ourselves. I shoveled two hundred wheelbarrow loads of dirt from the cellar to increase the overhead clearance from five feet to a more comfortable and much dryer six and one-half feet, and I lined the floor with flat blue stones from the creek, creating a perfect place to store my homemade wine, cider, saucisson, and prosciutto. After sledgehammering used telephone-pole ends under the joists to level the floor and provide support, we ripped out walls to create a 1,200-square-foot kitchen-dining room-living room space, covering the floor ourselves with red quarry tile left over from a Howard Johnson’s renovation.

Bryan Ferry: ‘It’s always sad when I go back to Newcastle and see that certain places don’t exist any more. But it’s great that one shop – which was very important for me also – is still there, in a wonderful old arcade, with extravagant tiled floors, rather like the Bond Street arcades. It’s a shop called Windows, which is a family music shop and the only place you really go to buy records. The windows are full of clarinets, saxophones, electric guitars – a proper music shop, which sold everything. But just to see a trumpet in the window – a real instrument, to look at it and study it!

Architects don’t worry about which tiles go in the shower or which brand of dishwasher to install in the kitchen until after the floor plan is finalized. They know it’s better to decide these details later.

The Brazilians didn't do what people in the North had come to expect martial artists to do. They didn’t shriek, growl, howl, sneer, or grimace. They didn't fly through the air to smash roofing tiles with their feet, or slice the tops off whiskey bottles with the sides of their hands. They didn't break bricks or blocks of ice with their heads. They didn't chop the horns off of bulls, extinguish candles with ki power, walk across floors covered with rice paper without tearing it, snatch pebbles from the fingers of blind monks, or meditate under mountainside waterfalls in winter. What the Brazilians did do was to easily subdue the martial artists who performed all these impressive but ultimately meaningless feats.

I DON’T THINK so.” I blinked upward into Cass’s face. His hair was haloed by a fluorescent ceiling light. I was in a glaringly bright room with puke-green walls and a tiled floor. My arm was attached to an IV stand, and by the wall was a wheeled table with beeping medical machines. “Huh?” I said. “You called me Mom. I said, ‘I don’t think so.’” “Sorry,” I said. “The Dream.

She could show up for class naked and singing Queen songs, and they’d use her as an example of modern Dionysian behavior. Her supposed graduate career is just a cover for the life she’s not openly allowed to lead.) Instead she’s here, in this sterile, brightly lit place, watching a woman’s blood—a friend’s blood—spread across the tile floor like a benediction.

It is a huge slab of dark stone, square and rough, like the rocks at the bottom of the chasm. A large crack runs through the middle of it, and there are streaks of lighter rock near the edges. Suspended above the slab is a glass tank of the same dimensions, full of water. A light placed above the center of the tank shines through the water, refracting as it ripples. I hear a faint noise, a drop of water hitting the stone. It comes from a small tube running through the center of the tank. At first I think the tank is just leaking, but another drop falls, then a third, and a fourth, at the same interval. A few drops collect, and then disappear down a narrow channel in the stone. They must be intentional. “Hello.” Zoe stands on the other side of the sculpture. “I’m sorry, I was about to go to the dormitory for you, then saw you heading this way and wondered if you were lost.” “No, I’m not lost,” I say. “This is where I meant to go.” “Ah.” She stands beside me and crosses her arms. She is about as tall as I am, but she stands straighter, so she seems taller. “Yeah, it’s pretty weird, right?” As she talks I watch the freckles on her cheeks, dappled like sunlight through dense leaves. “Does it mean something?” “It’s the symbol of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare,” she says. “The slab of stone is the problem we’re facing. The tank of water is our potential for changing that problem. And the drop of water is what we’re actually able to do, at any given time.” I can’t help it—I laugh. “Not very encouraging, is it?” She smiles. “That’s one way of looking at it. I prefer to look at it another way—which is that if they are persistent enough, even tiny drops of water, over time, can change the rock forever. And it will never change back.” She points to the center of the slab, where there is a small impression, like a shallow bowl carved into the stone. “That, for example, wasn’t there when they installed this thing.” I nod, and watch the next drop fall. Even though I’m wary of the Bureau and everyone in it, I can feel the quiet hope of the sculpture working its way through me. It’s a practical symbol, communicating the patient attitude that has allowed the people here to stay for so long, watching and waiting. But I have to ask. “Wouldn’t it be more effective to unleash the whole tank at once?” I imagine the wave of water colliding with the rock and spilling over the tile floor, collecting around my shoes. Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but I feel like when you believe that something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can’t help yourself.

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The guide then invited us upstairs to see Gandhi’s private quarters. Taking off our shoes, we entered a simple room with a floor of smooth, patterned tile, its terrace doors open to admit a slight breeze and a pale, hazy light. I stared at the spartan floor bed and pillow, the collection of spinning wheels, the old-fashioned phone and low wooden writing desk, trying to imagine Gandhi present in the room, a slight, brown-skinned man in a plain cotton dhoti, his legs folded under him, composing a letter to the British viceroy or charting the next phase of the Salt March. And in that moment, I had the strongest wish to sit beside him and talk. To ask him where he’d found the strength and imagination to do so much with so very little. To ask how he’d recovered from disappointment. He’d had more than his share. For all his extraordinary gifts, Gandhi hadn’t been able to heal the subcontinent’s deep religious schisms or prevent its partitioning into a predominantly Hindu India and an overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan, a seismic event in which untold numbers died in sectarian violence and millions of families were forced to pack up what they could carry and migrate across newly established borders. Despite his labors, he hadn’t undone India’s stifling caste system. Somehow, though, he’d marched, fasted, and preached well into his seventies—until that final day in 1948, when on his way to prayer, he was shot at point-blank range by a young Hindu extremist who viewed his ecumenism as a betrayal of the faith.

was the soft click of footsteps on the white-and-gold tile floor. I peered down the aisle, spotting Drake, my father.

All right you guys,” I said, tapping my toe on the tiled floor and smirking at my guys through the mirror’s reflection, “time to admit it. Out of all of us, I’m the deadliest member of Poison.” Kai stifled a laugh as João straight-up chuckled in my face. “You have that all backward,” João said. “I do not,” I defended, pulling down my shirt and feeling freedom. Absolute freedom.

Blaise grabbed an empty chair from the back and dragged it—literally dragged the metal legs on the tiled floor—toward me. He placed the metal chair in the middle of the aisle, not caring that he wasn’t even sitting at a desk. I gulped and dared to peek over at him. Sculpted jaw, dark—almost black—eyes, and a body so defined that all the girls swooned over him. He looked over and fucking smirked at me.

Gripping and rubbing his erect member, Jason watches it shift into an eight-inch black rattlesnake falling onto the tile flooring. The shuffling vermin claims its place. It slithers its way under Kyle’s pants. Sensing something cold and clammy crawling up his legs, Kyle froze in sheer horror, screaming to the top of his lungs as the rattlesnake pokes out from the crotch area hissing at him.

And that’s courage for the next time. And the next time. And inch by inch, you drag yourself back. Mend the knife-marks until they’re silver scars. Mop the floors until the tiles are not longer stained, and you do that once a fortnight now, because their shitty off-whiteness that collects far too much dirt and dust won’t beat you. You fix the small bits, one at a time. When you look back, you see the trail of black, oozing sick that you’ve tracked from the pit, all the way to here. It’s been a long, brutal journey. And yet, looking around, you’re shoulder to shoulder with your people, who have the same tools and same luck as you. You beat the odds, inch by inch. You haven’t won, not really, there’s no such thing, but you’re alive. You get to keep going.

The floor beneath her turned from flagstones to smooth, black-and-white tiles, and, as they entered the church, she felt the urge to submit, - let it happen, let herself be guided forward; behave nicely, as expected, like the flower girls: sugar, spice, subordination.

Sometimes in life, you can’t be one hundred percent sure…” She gives me a hard, meaningful look. Something tells me she isn’t talking about floor tiles anymore. “Sometimes, you have to take a risk. Even when you aren’t ready. When you aren’t sure.” “Uh…yeah.” I turn my attention back to the work in front of me. Eventually, she sighs in frustration and spins on her heel but then she pauses again. She just can’t control herself. “You do realize that that was a metaphor, right?” I laugh deep in my throat. “Yes, Sophia. I get the deeper meaning.” She’s telling me to take a risk on Reese even though I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. She looks pleased with herself and smiles wide. “There’s more cupcakes in the kitchen if you want.” Her heels click loudly as she disappears back down the hall.

I had to sit down on the floor. Then I had to lie down against the cold tiling, supine, as if love were a force like gravity. A thing to keep me close and crawling on the ground.

I loved it because in the mornings a perfect slant of light draped itself across the kitchen, spilling golden egg yolk across the table and tiled floor...

In fact, the sad truth is that I didn’t understand a thing about life until mine was spilling, black-red, onto the white tile of my bathroom floor. Maybe no one does.

The answer's no, now get your shit together. Andy and Taffy, go and grab a couple of those blankets, we'll be in need of them later,' Williams said, jumping down from the table, his boots clicking loudly on the tile floor. 'Back to the fucking war, the general's spoken,' Ed muttered. 'I heard that you scrawny fuck, now shake yourself out and let's get moving.

She pressed her forehead down onto the cold, clean tiles. “Please undo what I’ve done, Lord,” she said. “I will never ask anything of you, ever again, if you just give me back the life of Gideon Nav.” “I can’t,” he said. He had a bittersweet, scratchy voice, and it was infinitely gentle. “I would very much like to. But that soul’s inside you now. If I tried to pull it out, I’d take yours with it and destroy both in the process. What’s done is done. Now you have to live with it.” She was empty. That was the terrible thing: there was nothing inside her but the sick and bubbling detestation of her House. Even the silence of her soul could not dilute the hatred that had fermented in her from the genesis of the Ninth House downward. Harrowhark picked herself up off the floor and looked her Emperor dead in his dark and shining eyes. “How dare you ask me to live with it?” The Emperor did not render her down to a pile of ash, as she partly wished he would. Instead, he rubbed at one temple, and he held her gaze, sombre and even. “Because,” he said, “the Empire is dying.” She said nothing. “If there had been any less need you would be sitting back home in Drearburh, living a long and quiet life with nothing to worry or hurt you, and your cavalier would still be alive. But there are things out there that even death cannot keep down. I have been fighting them since the Resurrection. I can’t fight them by myself.” Harrow said, “But you’re God.” And God said, “And I am not enough.

Often when I do interviews and press events from space, I’m asked what I miss about Earth. I have a few answers I always reach for that make sense in any context: I mention rain, spending time with my family, relaxing at home. Those are always true. But throughout the day, from moment to moment, I’m aware of missing all sorts of random things that don’t even necessarily rise to the surface of my consciousness. I miss cooking. I miss chopping fresh food, the smell vegetables give up when you first slice into them. I miss the smell of the unwashed skins of fruit, the sight of fresh produce piled high in grocery stores. I miss grocery stores, the shelves of bright colors and the glossy tile floors and the strangers wandering the aisles. I miss people. I miss the experience of meeting new people and getting to know them, learning about a life different from my own, hearing about things people experienced that I haven’t. I miss the sound of children playing, which always sounds the same no matter their language. I miss the sound of people talking and laughing in another room. I miss rooms. I miss doors and door frames and the creak of wood floorboards when people walk around in old buildings. I miss sitting on my couch, sitting on a chair, sitting on a bar stool. I miss the feeling of resting after opposing gravity all day. I miss the rustle of papers, the flap of book pages turning. I miss drinking from a glass. I miss setting things down on a table and having them stay there. I miss the sudden chill of wind on my back, the warmth of sun on my face. I miss showers. I miss running water in all its forms: washing my face, washing my hands. I miss sleeping in a bed—the feel of sheets, the heft of a comforter, the welcoming curve of a pillow. I miss the colors of clouds at different times of day and the variety of sunrises and sunsets on Earth.

Sophia sweetly smiled as I helped her to her feet. Her white Adidas sneakers were silent as she crossed the tiled floor to stand in front of EBD. I stood by her side, daring that nigga to buck. “Open your mouth,” Sophia demanded. EBD grilled Sophia defiantly. “Baby, tell this nigga I don’t repeat myself,” Sophia said sweetly. I cocked my head to the left, grilling him. EBD opened his mouth, his eyes never leaving Sophia. Before he could blink, Sophia popped a dissolvable pill into his mouth. By the time he was trying to spit it out, it was too late. “You’re allergic to triptans and peanuts, right?” Sophia goaded as EBD fell to the floor in a panic. He began coughing, clawing at his throat as his eyes bulged. “Your friend, Dr. Mitchell knew everything about you. The tablet I just popped in your mouth, I happened to find at the bottom of a brand-new canister of roasted peanuts.” She smiled before dropping to her haunches at his side. EBD was wheezing and struggling for breath. Tears streamed from his eyes as they begged for help. “You’re suffering,” Sophia pretended to care. “That feeling that you feel is how you’ve made a lot of families feel over the years you’ve been carrying on this disgusting lifestyle. Burn in hell, muthafucka!” My baby got up and switched her sexy ass over to Gatah. She kissed his cheek. “Where the hell is my daughter-in-law? You were supposed to stay home with her.” Everyone chuckled. “I had to come make sure you and Pops ain’t fuck shit up.” I scoffed. “The fuck! Boy, I taught you this shit!” We all enjoyed a good laugh while we watched EBD take his last breath.

She stared at the faded tile floor before her feet, but knew his every step around her small kitchen. When Martin touched the coffee cup patterned curtains he must assume she’d made, her fingers throbbed. When his eyes slid across the flowery aluminum water bottle at the table, her throat cracked with thirst. The radio clicked off. The silence of the room soaked up her raspy breaths, her pounding heart, her ache, and stirred them around the one man she ever longed for in a way that changes how you taste the world. Her desire swirled in a pulsing, betraying, blurry hook, and encouraged him to move closer. Martin obeyed.

so he shoved his claw into her mouth, separated her jaw from her face with a mighty pull, and continued pulling it down her neck until the screaming stopped. Her blood sprayed all over the beige table, the countertop, and the floor, as well as Gor’s green scaly body. The woman flailed the air wildly with her arms until she fell into a heap on the tile floor.

The bathtub is on fire. Flames sit atop bloody water, licking upwards and scorching the ceiling. The fire keeps burning, regardless of cause or fuel. A large silver knife, stolen from her mother’s kitchen, sits on the floor beside the tub. Blood coats the blade and handle, pooling on the tile and running into the grout. The last she remembers, she had been slitting her wrists. She was tired of the dreams of fire and blood. Tired of feeling like she didn’t belong. She’d run the water and sat in the tub. She’d drawn the blade across her skin, feeling the odd invasive pain as it cut. She’d welcomed it.

Here is the correct order for performing renovations. 1.       Remove any flooring to be replaced 2.       Ceiling repair and ceiling painting 3.       Strip wallpaper, repair walls, paint walls 4.       Paint and replace trim, including crown molding 5.       Cabinet and countertop work 6.       Install tile or quality wood laminate flooring (this may shorten the space for the appliances that go under the counter like dishwashers, so be careful with measurements pre-floor installation) 7.       Install new appliances 8.       Install base molding and baseboards in rooms with tile, vinyl, or quality wood laminate flooring 9.       Install carpet (scratch that, NEVER put carpet in a rental) 10.   Tidy up the landscaping

Recoiling backwards from the horror, his flight catapulted him headlong over the rail of the balcony. His piercing scream drowned out the uproarious Happy Birthday greeting from his wife, friends, and neighbors flooding into the hallway and the living room to begin the celebration. In midair, when someone turned on the lights in the dining room, Gary saw the monster from the master bedroom pulling off her rubber mask and looking down at him from the railing with sad eyes. It was Janine, his next-door neighbor. In the seconds before Gary lost consciousness after breaking his neck on the ceramic tile floor, he saw the entire room fill with balloons and confetti. Gwen looked ravishing in her favorite cocktail dress blowing a noisemaker and tossing a streamer into the air. A huge banner with the words, “Happy Halloween, Gary on Your 40th Birthday… A Night To Remember” was the last thing he saw before the grim reaper gobbled him up. Gwen had done it again. She had planned a truly memorable party that no one in attendance would ever forget. Gary died on the same day he was born, October 31.

Marla heard Jose shout something just before his phone bounced off the tile floor, and he let out a short-lived blood-curdling scream. Holding the phone to her ear, she listened to the ripping and tearing of flesh and the snap, crackle, and pop of bones breaking as the soundtrack of final Jeopardy started to play on the dilapidated 19-inch TV.

Pulling her wrist from his mouth was as hard as turning from the gates of paradise. She fell back off the bed and sat down hard on the tile floor. The vampire snarled and rose to a crouch, silhouetted by the last rays of the setting sun. Her blood stained his lips and his chin. “What the hell were you doing?” Cat’s mouth fell open. “What. I mean.” He wiped the blood off his chin with his fingers and regarded it in fascination and disgust. “Seriously, woman. What is wrong with you? Haven’t you ever heard of consent?” She

Segmentation is really about meeting some needs very strongly, even at the expense of others, which a retailer cannot afford to do. For example, playing loud rock music, dressing the checkout operators in funky outfits and tiling the floors black and pink will alienate certain important segments, even if it is strongly appealing to others. The store values have to appeal to the whole heterogeneous target.

Go on, just come out with it, whatever it is.” She braced herself against the counter. Peter glanced down at the tile floor, and then back up at her, and sighed. “Fine. Here it is. Do you think Witches could have killed my father?

Buried Cities During the Roman Empire, wealthy Romans took vacations in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The people in these towns did not know that nearby Mount Vesuvius doomed them. On August 24 in the year A.D. 79, the top blew off the mountain. Hot rock and ash buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. An estimated five thousand people died when their houses collapsed or they choked to death on the ash. After the Roman Empire ended, the people in neighboring cities forgot Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the sixteenth century, an architect named Domenico Fontana found evidence that cities were buried under 20 feet (6 m) of earth. It was another two hundred years before anyone began digging. In the 1800s, archaeologists were stunned to discover the perfectly preserved forms of people who had died trying to flee the volcano. They also uncovered graceful courtyards and beautiful homes with elegant tile floors and statues. These discoveries helped scientists learn what the daily life of the ancient Romans might have been like. In 2002, they found that the port area along the Gulf of Naples had houses built on stilts. Still more mysteries wait to be uncovered.

I’m shaking the residual tingles out of my head when Bruno bursts in, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth and a bath towel wrapped low around his waist. Really low. My own stomach tightens at the sight of his. That’s got to be more than a six-pack. It’s, like…a twelve-pack. Bruno shuffles around in his closet, intermittently brushing his teeth with one hand and pushing hangers with the other. He turns his head to me and starts to speak, but toothpaste flies out onto the tile floor. I erupt into laughter. Even the hottest guys are just guys. They brush their teeth and it spews when they try to talk at the same time. And unfortunately for me, fresh off a Bruno dream, it’s adorable. He tries to suppress a laugh and even more spit flies through the room. He clamps a hand over his mouth as he rushes to the bathroom. I hear the water run followed by an earnest chuckle deep from his gut.

almost musical, twangs. The sun is shining through the stained glass window above the front door, casting colourful geometric patterns across the floor tiles. At the base of the stairs she swings for a moment on the large final bannister. The lounge door is ajar and peering in she can see one edge of the television screen, her mother’s

I step up on the little wooden bridge that arches over the huge clear koi pond in the lobby. The blue and gray tiles on the floor of the pond are littered with pennies, dimes, quarters; my father would say That’s a lot of money to throw away on wishes. I’m jittering my fingers on the wooden railing, watching a pure gold koi get jostled by his big spotted pondmates, when a small dark silhouette ripples beside me. I hear the crunch of a plastic snack bag, catch a glimpse of an amber ring. Now that she’s here, I think about running. But I don’t. “Gummy bear?” she says. I whisper, “How old are you?” “Guess.” “You look twelve.” “I’m seventeen. But thanks. That never gets old.

They ate at a place called El Rey del Taco. At the entrance there was a neon sign: a kid wearing a big crown mounted on a burro that regularly kicked up its hind legs and tried to throw him. The boy never fell, although in one hand he was holding a taco and in the other a kind of scepter that could also serve as a riding crop. The inside was decorated like a McDonald’s, but in an unsettling way. The chairs were straw, not plastic. The tables were wooden. The floor was covered in big green tiles, some of them printed with desert landscapes and episodes from the life of El Rey del Taco. From the ceiling hung piñatas featuring more adventures of the boy king, always accompanied by the burro. Some of the scenes depicted were charmingly ordinary: the boy, the burro, and a one-eyed old woman, or the boy, the burro, and a well, or the boy, the burro, and a pot of beans. Other scenes were set firmly in the realm of the fantastic: in some the boy and the burro fell down a ravine, in others, the boy and the burro were tied to a funeral pyre, and there was even one in which the boy threatened to shoot his burro, holding a gun to its head. It was as if El Rey del Taco weren’t the name of a restaurant but a character in a comic book Fate happened never to have heard of. Still, the feeling of being in a McDonald’s persisted. Maybe the waitresses and waiters, very young and dressed in military uniforms (Chucho Flores told him they were dressed up as federales), helped create the impression. This was certainly no victorious army. The young waiters radiated exhaustion, although they smiled at the customers. Some of them seemed lost in the desert that was El Rey del Taco. Others, fifteen-year-olds or fourteen-year-olds, tried in vain to joke with some of the diners, men on their own or in pairs who looked like government workers or cops, men who eyed them grimly, in no mood for jokes. Some of the girls had tears in their eyes, and they seemed unreal, faces glimpsed in a dream. “This place is like hell,” he said to Rosa Amalfitano. “You’re right,” she said, looking at him sympathetically, “but the food isn’t bad.

almost musical, twangs. The sun is shining through the stained glass window above the front door, casting colourful geometric patterns across the floor tiles. At the base of the stairs she swings for a moment on the large final bannister. The lounge door is

No sooner was she twenty-three years old than she was twenty-eight; no sooner twenty-eight than thirty-one; time is speeding past her while she examines her existence with a cold, deadly gaze that takes aim at the different areas of her life, one by one-the damp studio crawling with roaches, mold growing in the grout between tiles; the bank loan swallowing all her spare cash; close, intense friendships marginalized by newborn babies, polarized by screaming sweetness that leaves her cold; stress-soaked days and canceled girls’ nights out, but, legs perfectly waxed, ending up jabbering in dreary wine bars with a bevy or available women, shrieking with forced laughter, and always joining in, out of cowardice, opportunism; occasional sexual adventures on crappy mattresses, or against greasy, sooty garage doors, with guys who are clumsy, rushed, stingy, unloving; an excess of alcohol to make all this shine; and the only encounter that makes her heart beat faster is with a guy who pushes back a strand of her hair to light her cigarette, his fingers brushing her temple and the lobe of her ear, who has mastered the art of the sudden appearance, whenever, wherever, his movements impossible to predict, as if he spent his life hiding behind a post, coming out to surprise her in the golden light of a late afternoon, calling her at night in a nearby cafe, walking toward her one morning from a street corner, and always stealing away just as suddenly when it’s over, like a magician, before returning … That deadly gaze strips away everything, even her face, even her body, no matter how well she takes care of it-fitness magazines, tubes of slimming cream, and one hour of floor barre in a freezing hall in Docks Vauban. She is alone and disappointed, in a sate of disgrace, stamping her feet as her teeth chatter and disillusionment invades her territories and her hinterland, darkening faces, ruining gestures, diverting intentions; it swells, this disillusionment, it multiplies, polluting the rivers and forests inside her, contaminating the deserts, infecting the groundwater, tearing the petals from flowers and dulling the luster in animals’ fur; it stains the ice floe beyond the polar circle and soils the Greek dawn, it smears the most beautiful poems with mournful misfortune, it destroys the planet and all its inhabitants from the Big Bang to the rockets of the future, and fucks up the whole world- this hollow, disenchanted world.

Dazed, she glanced around; the dark shapes of huge leaves reared above the denser dark of heavy pots, grouped upon a tiled floor. Moonlight streamed through walls of long windows and panes in the ceiling, silvering paths wending between sends of palms and exotic blooms. The rich scents of earth and the warm humidity of growing things hung on the heavy air.

These look rather exotic." Behind her, Vane studied the way her gown had pulled tight over the curves of her bottom- and didn't argue. Lips lifting in anticipation, he moved in- to spring his trap. Her heart racing, tripping in double time, Patience straightened, and went to slide around the fountain, to place it between herself and the wolf she was trapped in the conservatory with. Instead, she ran into an arm. She blinked at it. One faultless grey sleeve enclosing solid bone well covered with steely muscle, large fist locked over the scrolled rim of the basin, it stated very clearly that she wasn't going anywhere. Patience whirled- and found her retreat similarly blocked. Swinging farther, she met Vane's gaze; standing on the tiled floor, one step below her, arms braced on the rim, his eyes were nearly level with hers. She studied them, read his intent in the silvered grey, in the hardening lines of his face, the brutally sensual line of those uncompromising lips. She couldn't believe her eyes. "Here?" The word, weak though it was, accurately reflected her disbelief. "Right here. Right now.

Grabbing the bowl with both hands, I stepped right up behind him, reached my arms up high, and tipped it over. The sense of glee I got as I watched his entire body stiffen and all that batter fall onto his head was kind of alarming. No wonder he’d been so proud of his suction-cup hickey. I was damn proud of this mess. When only a little dribble was falling from the bowl, I brought the bowl away from his head, set it on the counter, and had only taken two steps when he grabbed me around my waist and hauled me back to him. The movement made him lose his footing on the now-slippery tile and we both crashed down to the floor. Quickly getting up on my hands and knees, I slip-crawled a few feet before my legs went out and I fell back to the floor. Kash dragged me back by my legs and I was laughing so hard I couldn’t even attempt to try to crawl away as he flipped me over on my back and slipped toward me until he was covering my body. I laughed harder and wiped at his cheek, which was completely covered. “You, uh, got a little something there.” His eyes were silver as he growled, “Now do you feel better?” “Much!” “I probably deserved that.” “A little bit.” My laughter finally quieted and I smiled widely at him. “Rachel . . .” His voice dropped and the huskiness alone caused my breathing to deepen. When I realized that our bodies were flush, mine started warming again, and my eyelids fluttered shut when he brought one hand up to cup my cheek. When he repeated my name, I could feel his breath against my lips and they parted in anticipation. His hand left my cheek and he leaned closer to whisper in my ear, “Your hickey looks really lonely.” Wait. What?! My eyes flew open just as he wiped a hand covered in batter across my face. “You son of a bitch!” Kash laughed loudly and attempted to move some of the batter so it wasn’t in my eyes. “I will end you,” I said, making him laugh harder. “I hate you.” “Don’t lie, Sour Patch, you love me.” He was joking, I knew he was joking—but my heart still took off at his assumption. Kash must have noticed the change somehow, because he immediately stopped laughing and his gray eyes turned silver. “Rachel?” “I, uh—we should clean this up.” I attempted to slide out from under him, but he kept his weight on me and brought his hand up to my cheek again. I stopped moving beneath him and locked up my body as his gaze held mine. His silver eyes fell over my face as his head inched down, and in the torturous seconds where his lips hovered over mine again, I told myself a dozen times I needed to push him away. But needing and wanting are two completely different things. Kash closed the distance between us and pressed his lips to mine, and in that instant, I felt like I was exactly where I belonged and my body relaxed between him and the tile floor.

no point. It's hopeless!" Henry twisted in Tony's grip, wild enough to break free. Perhaps their weekly fencing sessions had begun paying dividends of strength and agility. That, or his fury was borne of true desperation, not just another boyish disappointment. "Henry." The word filled the kitchen, echoing off tiled floors, gleaming countertops, and a multitude of copper pots and pans, relics from his grandmother's day. How long had it been since a child threw a tantrum in Wellegrave House's preternaturally serene kitchen? So long Tony could practically