Got Registered Quotes

Oh, the troubles I go through for my wife.” A thrill went up my spine at his words. “Am I really? We don’t need to have a ceremony or register with the church?” “Darling, we burned down the church.

originaldegreereview.blogspot.com seems to be the only suggestion for me. I work full time, and don't have enough time to study from a physical class. My friend introduced me to this site, and I got registered for original-degree.com for degree.

And what do you know, John's hands flew through the positions of ASL in various l-got-this combinations. "Is he deaf" the guy behind the cash register asked in a stage whisper. As if someone using American Sign Language was some kind of freak. "No. Blind." "Oh." As the man kept staring, Qhuinn wanted to pop him. "You going to help us out here or what?" "Oh ... yeah. Hey, you got a tattoo on your face." Mr. Observant moved slowly, like the bar codes on those bags were creating some kind of wind resistance under his laser reader. "Did you know that?" Really. "I wouldn't know." ''Are you blind, too?" No filter on this guy. None. "Yeah, I am." "Oh, so that's why your eyes are all weird." "Yeah. That's right." Qhuinn took out a twenty and didn't wait for change-murder was just a liiiiiittle too tempting. Nodding to John, who was also measuring the dear boy for a shroud, Qhuinn went to walk off. "What about your change ?" the man called out. "I'm deaf, too. I can't hear you." The guy yelled more loudly, "I'll just keep it then, yeah?" "Sounds good," Qhuinn shouted over his shoulder. Idiot was stage-five stupid. Straight up.

Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths of a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at the age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there.

So I want to share a little news." "You getting married?" Butch tossed back half the new Lag. "Where you registered? Crate and Bury 'Em?" "Try Heckler and Koch." The Reverend opened his jacket and flashed the butt of a forty. "Nice little poodle shooter you got there, vampire." "Put a hell of a-" V cut in. "You two are like playing tennis, and racquet sports bore me. What's the news?" Revh looked at Butch. "He has such phenomenal people skills, doesn't he." "Try living with him.

the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn’t close your heart completely, but you couldn’t leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

The mice were furious." [...] "Oh yes," said the old man mildly. "Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but..." "Ah, but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?" "Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" [...] "Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. It was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built, and we've got to build another one." Only one word registered with Arthur. "Mice?" he said. "Indeed Earthman." "Look, sorry - are we talking about the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming in early sixties sit coms?" Slartibartfast coughed politely. "[...] These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pandimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front." The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued. "They've been experimenting on you, I'm afraid.

The newly dubbed General Lafayette was only nineteen years old. Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths of a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at the age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there.

I barely registered the warmth of her arms around my shoulders the press of her kiss to my neck when I stilled on top of her, or the way she whispered, “Stay on top of me like this forever.” “Don’t ever stop being so fucking open,” I murmured, pulling my gaze to her face. “Don’t stop asking for what you want.” “I won’t,” she whispered. “I got you tonight, didn’t I?” And just that simply, I was claimed.

Men!" "At least we don't fake it." "Listen, it was your uncle. And we were late, remember? So I made the sacrifice and got us there in time for dessert. You should be thanking me." Morelli's mouth was open slightly and his face was registering a mixture of astonished disbelief and wounded, pissed-off male pride. Okay, it wasn't that much of a sacrifice at the time, and I knew he shouldn't be thanking me, but give me a break here... this wasn't famine in Ethiopia

We stayed like that while bees swirled around our heads with a sound like sizzling bacon, a sound that no longer registered as danger. Danger, I realized, was a thing you got used to.

Alex is frozen, registering the press of Henry's lips and the wool cuffs of his coat grazing his jaw. The world fuzzes out into static, and his brain is swimming hard to keep up, adding up the equation of teenage grudges and wedding cakes and two a.m. texts and not understanding the variable that got him here, except it's...well, surprisingly, he really doesn't mind. Like, at all.

Arthur followed Ford’s finger, and saw where it was pointing. For a moment it still didn’t register, then his mind nearly blew up. “What? Harmless? Is that all it’s got to say? Harmless! One word!” Ford shrugged. “Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book’s microprocessors,” he said, “and no one knew much about the Earth, of course.” “Well, for God’s sake, I hope you managed to rectify that a bit.” “Oh yes, well, I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it’s still an improvement.” “And what does it say now?” asked Arthur. “Mostly harmless,

So I got my stuff and the girl at the register puts these other things in my bag, too. Little free samples: gum and a comb and a marker pen. So I says to her, 'Look, girlie, I got false teeth and I wear a wig.' So she fishes back in my bag and takes out the comb and the gum. Left the pen in there. Anyways, I went back to the van, even though I knew it was locked. Figured I'd just wait and have a smoke. You can't smoke in the van, see? So while I'm waiting there, minding my own business, this car pulls into the handicapped space right next to us--brand-new car, white and clean, and it's got this bumper sticker on it that says, 'Life Is a Shit Sandwich.' Isn't that stupid? So this guy gets out--good-lookin' fella, in his twenties. I say to him, 'Hey, handsome, tell me something.' He takes a look at my walker and gets all panicky. 'I'm just running in for two seconds,' he says. See, he thinks I'm going to yell at him for parking in a handicapped space, but I ain't. I don't give a rat's ass about that, you see. I'd rather walk the extra ten feet than be called handicapped. Where was I?' She amazed me. 'Life's a shit sandwich,' I said. 'Oh, yeah. Right. So that guy goes runnin' into the store and here's what I did. I fished that free pen out of the bag and marched right over there to that bumper of his. Got myself right down on the ground--and I wrote--just after the 'Life's a shit sandwich' part--I wrote, 'But only if you're a shithead.' 'Course, then I couldn't get myself back up again--had to yell over to a couple of kids at the phone booth to come pick me back up.

I wish they'd conduct a national poll to find out who feels out of place and who doesn't. Just to get the numbers, you know? To get a feel for how many of us there are. Sometimes at work I get the feeling that it's got to be right up against 100%. I’ll head out to the register to help out during the lunch rush and the new cashier will look so confused and lost, and then I’ll look at the customers she’s supposed to be helping, and they’ll look lost, too, and then when I sneak a glance toward the tables there’ll be all these people staring at their food or at each other with blank looks in their eyes. And I’ll think: Is this just me? Is everybody else actually fine, and I’m just trying to imagine that they’re like me? But I don’t think so. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m pretty sure that some ridiculous percentage of the population is walking around feeling like aliens. I think teenagers feel that all the time...

As my wife saw it—as most people would see it, I imagine—an unwritten book was hardly a financial plan. “In other words,” she said, “you’ve got some magic beans in your pocket. That’s what you’re telling me. You have some magic beans, and you’re going to plant them, and overnight a huge beanstalk is going to grow high into the sky, and you’ll climb up the beanstalk, kill the giant who lives in the clouds, and then bring home a goose that lays golden eggs. Is that it?” “Something like that,” I said. Michelle shook her head and looked out the window. We both knew what I was asking for. Another disruption. Another gamble. Another step in the direction of something I wanted and she truly didn’t. “This is it, Barack,” Michelle said. “One last time. But don’t expect me to do any campaigning. In fact, you shouldn’t even count on my vote.” — AS A KID, I had sometimes watched as my salesman grandfather tried to sell life insurance policies over the phone, his face registering misery as he made cold calls in the evening from our tenth-floor apartment in a Honolulu high-rise. During the early months of 2003, I found myself thinking of him often as I sat at my desk in the sparsely furnished headquarters of my newly launched Senate campaign

We’ve got it raw, but at least we’re not Reds, you register?” Righto.

Breaker: Yeah, tell me about it. I was in awe, and my nipples got hard. JP: I appreciate a hard nipple on a man. Shows me that he registers with his emotions.

I got that scar in Greene County, Alabama, trying to register to vote in 1964.

She’s on it? And she has the item?” “Yes. She passed through using her own ID, Dysson from Freemantle.” The agent watched his senior. “If she’s playing for the other side, Boss, we can still pick her up at the other end.” “Very likely. More important is what she’s doing for us.” Brown turned. “And if we did stop her we’d have the problem of trying to replace her.” He paused. “Turn the whole place over, make them think we think the chips are still here. Make them think we don’t know who are working for their side.” He scowled. “And make the bloody Pantheon think their people are still here.” For a moment the man stared, his face slowly registering the implications. “The chips she’s carrying are not the plans, are they, sir?”        “Max, sometimes the price of keeping something secure and out of the hands of someone who will abuse it is almost too high. They’ve got the plans—but when they try to build it …” He shrugged.

Just in time to pick up the shells after the shoot-out is over, I'm sure. I've known a few analysts and number crunchers. You work with paper, computers, pore over printouts-charts, graphs, scatter plots but you don't deal with people. You're more comfortable with bits and bytes," Caston tilted his head. "John Henry did beat the steam drill once. Maybe you were sleeping in when the information age dawned. Today, technology spans borders. It watches. It hears. It registers patterns, small statistical perturbations, and if we're willing to pay attention--" "It can hear, but it can't listen. It can watch, but it can't observe And it sure as hell can't converse with the men and women we've got to deal with. There's no substitute for that, goddammit.

Erin Werley is a Registered Nurse with a B.A. in history. She started talking to God in her head in 2011. Along the way, she fell in love, got married and had two of the best kids in the world.

But, that doesn’t mean you can give up on yourself. Never give up on yourself! Losin’ hope and faith in yourself is the worst thing that can happen. I’ll be there, every step of the way. I’ll help you find those pieces and some of them might be so sharp that they’ll cut me, but I’ll bleed for you. I’ll bleed every last drop for you. Let me help you.” When she still says nothing, I add, “Once you have all the scabs off and your wounds are bleedin’, you can really start to heal. We’ll be able to make new memories and have great times together.” Her breath hitches and then her voice comes out trembling, “I wasn’t allowed out of the closet. I never got to bathe or use the toilet.” I’m so shocked that she’s talking that my mouth drops open and I don’t quite register what she’s saying.

Oh, the troubles I go through for my wife.” A thrill went up my spine at his words. “Am I really? We don’t need to have a ceremony or register with the church?” “Darling, we burned down the church.” “Oh yeah.

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and jumped when I turned and found Ren’s brother standing behind me as a man. Ren got up, alert, and watched him carefully, suspicious of Kishan’s every move. Ren’s tail twitched back and forth, and a deep grumble issued from his chest. Kishan look down at Ren, who had crept even closer to keep an eye on him, and then looked back at me. He reached out his hand, and when I placed mine in it, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it, then bowed deeply with great aplomb. “May I ask your name?” “My name is Kelsey. Kelsey hayes.” “Kelsey. Well, I, for one, appreciate all the efforts you have made on our behalf. I apologize if I frightened you earlier. I am,” he smiled, “out of practice in conversing with young ladies. These gifts you will be offering to Durga. Would you kindly tell me more about them?” Ren growled unhappily. I nodded. “Is Kishan your given name?” “My full name is actually Sohan Kishan Rajaram, but you can call me Kishan if you like.” He smiled a dazzling white smile, which was even more brilliant due to the contrast with his dark skin. He offered an arm. “Would you please sit and talk with me, Kelsey?” There was something very charming about Kishan. I surprised myself by finding I immediately trusted and liked him. He had a quality similar to his brother. Like Ren, he had the ability to set a person completely at ease. Maybe it was their diplomatic training. Maybe it was how their mother raised them. Whatever it was made me respond positively. I smiled at him. “I’d love to.” He tucked my arm under his and walked with me over to the fire. Ren growled again, and Kishan shot a smirk in his direction. I noticed him wince when he sat, so I offered him some aspirin. “Shouldn’t we be getting you two to a doctor? I really think you might need stitches and Ren-“ “Thank you, but no. You don’t need to worry about our minor pains.” “I wouldn’t exactly call your wounds minor, Kishan.” “The curse helps us to heal quickly. You’ll see. We’ll both recover swiftly enough on our own. Still, it was nice to have such a lovely young woman tending to my injuries.” Ren stood in front of us and looked like he was a tiger suffering from apoplexy. I admonished, “Ren, be civil.” Kishan smiled widely and waited for me to get comfortable. Then he scooted closer to me and rested his arm on the log behind my shoulders. Ren stepped right between us, nudged his brother roughly aside with his furry head, creating a wider space, and maneuvered his body into the middle. He dropped heavily to the ground and rested his head in my lap. Kishan frowned, but I started talking, sharing the story of what Ren and I had been through. I told him about meeting Ren at the circus and about how he tricked me to get me to India. I talked about Phet, the Cave of Kanheri, and finding the prophecy, and I told him that we were on our way to Hampi. As I lost myself in our story, I stroked Ren’s head. He shut his eyes and purred, and then he fell asleep. I talked for almost an hour, barely registering Kishan’s raised eyebrow and thoughtful expression as he watched the two of us together. I didn’t even notice when he’d changed back into a tiger.

She had too much imagination. Too much empathy. That’s what Madeline had been trying to explain to Bonnie at assembly that morning. Those little girls were completely real to Abigail, and of course, they were real, there was real pain in the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn’t close your heart completely, but you couldn’t leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes. “So

I saw her sign the register, but her name isn't on it any more. The bellboy says he never saw her. Now they've got me so I'm scared and shaky, like a little kid is of the dark. I want you men to help me. Won't you men help me?' 'We'll help you' - said the lieutenant in charge. Slowly, awfully slowly; I didn't like that slowness - 'if we're able to.' And I knew what he meant; if we find any evidence that your story is true. ("All At Once, No Alice")

Dear . . . God,” she blurted as she recoiled. The hallway beyond was filled with the males of the house, the Brothers and other fighters and Manny sitting on the floor with their backs to the bare walls, their legs stretched out, propped up, crossed at the knees or crossed at the ankles. Apparently there had been quite a bit of drinking going on, empty bottles of vodka and whiskey littered around them, glasses in hands or on thighs. “This is not as pathetic as it looks,” her Butch pointed out. “Liar,” V muttered. “It so fucking is. I think I’m going to start knitting for reals.” As the females emerged with her, each one of them registered shock, disbelief, and then a wry amusement. “Is it me,” one of the males groused, “or did we just perform our own mass castration out here?” “I think that just about sums this shit up,” somebody agreed. “I’m wearing panties under my leathers from now on. Anyone joining me?” “Lassiter already does,” V said as he got to his feet and went to Jane. “Hey.” And then it was group-reunion time. While the other pairs found one another, Butch smiled as Marissa came over to him and put out her hand to help him off the floor. As they embraced, he kissed her on the side of the neck. “Are you out of love with me now?” he murmured. “’ Cuz I’m pussy-whipped?” She leaned back in his arms. “Why? Because you pined after me while I was watching a dirty movie with my girls that wasn’t all that dirty? I think it’s actually— and brace yourself— really pretty cute.” “I’m still all man.” As she rolled her body against him, she let out a mmmm as she felt his erection. “Yes, I can tell.

When TJ and I got to the bottom, we found Hope staring terrified at Molly. The dog had something long and horrible and meaty in her jaws. It took me a moment to register that it was a very fresh-looking human spine. Damn, she was hungry.

Do you need us to get you anything, sweetie?” Kincaid asked, sitting on the opposite side of the bed from Finn. “Water? A pill? A former football player in his underwear? Because we’ve got the last one covered. And I can make the first two happen.” Liv looked up at that, registering the fact that Finn was shirtless and his thick hair was sticking up every which way. Her gaze drifted down to his black boxer briefs. “You’re in your underwear.” “’Fraid so,” he said. “Good thing I don’t sleep naked.

The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief. In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what? But Mao's theory might just be the extension of his personality. He was, it seemed to me, really a restless fight promoter by nature, and good at it. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment, and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship. That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide. The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with little of its past glory remaining or appreciated. The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives. Yet the mood of the nation was unmistakably against continuing Mao's policies. Less than a month after his death, on 6 October, Mme Mao was arrested, along with the other members of the Gang of Four. They had no support from anyone not the army, not the police, not even their own guards. They had had only Mao. The Gang of Four had held power only because it was really a Gang of Five. When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone.

Logan looks up, registers my face and smiles immediately. I hold onto the back of a chair to steady my legs. Jeez, he’s got a nice smile; dimples appear in his chiseled cheeks and there is familiarity and warmth in his eyes. Real warmth, the likes of which I’ve not often seen. It suddenly strikes me that this man, whoever he might turn out to be, is genuine.

BROOKE PARKER STEPPED up to the bar at The Shore restaurant, ready to place her lunch order. The bartender, however, beat her to the punch. “Hey, it’s my favorite customer—Chicken Tacos, Extra Pico.” He flashed her a grin. “That’s my nickname for you.” Yes, she got that. “I suppose I’ve been called worse,” Brooke said as the bartender moved to the cash register to ring her up.

I was in love with Feyre,' Rhys said quietly, 'long before she ever returned the feeling.' Lucien crossed his arms. 'How fortunate that you got what you wanted in the end.' I closed my eyes for a heartbeat. Cassian and Azriel stilled, waiting for the order. 'I will only say this once,' warned the High Lord of the Night Court. Even Lucien flinched. 'I suspected Feyre was my mate before I ever knew she was involved with Tamlin. And when I learned of it... If it made her happy, I was willing to step back.' 'You came to our house and stole her away on her wedding day.' 'I was going to call the wedding off,' I cut in, taking a step toward Lucien. 'You knew it.' Rhysand went on before Lucien could snap a reply. 'I was willing to lose my mate to another male. I was willing to let them marry, if it brought her joy. But what I was not willing to do was let her suffer. To let her fade away into a shadow. And the moment that piece of shit blew apart his study, the moment he locked her in that house...' His wings ripped from him, and Lucien started. Rhys bared his teeth. My limbs turned light, trembling at the dark power curling in the corners of the room. Not fear- never fear of him. But at the shattered control as Rhys snarled at Lucien. 'My mate may one day find it in herself to forgive him. Forgive you. But I will never forget how it felt to sense her terror in those moments.' My cheeks heated, especially as Cassian and Azriel stalked closer, those hazel eyes now filled with a mix of sympathy and wrath. I had never talked about it to them- what had gone on that day Tamlin had destroyed his study, or the day he'd sealed me inside the manor. I'd never asked Rhys if he'd informed them. From the fury rippling from Cassian, the cold rage seeping from Azriel... I didn't think so. Lucien, to his credit, didn't back away a step. From Rhys, or me, or the Illyrians. The Clever Fox Stares Down Winged Death. The painting flashed in my mind. 'So, again, I will say this only once,' Rhys went on, his expression smoothing into lethal calm, dragging me from the colours and light and shadows gathering in my mind. 'Feyre did not dishonour or betray Tamlin. I revealed the mating bond months later- and she gave me hell for it, don't worry. But now that you've found your mate in a similar situation, perhaps you will try to understand how it felt. And if you can't be bothered, then I hope you're wise enough to keep your mouth shut, because the next time you look at my mate with that disdain and disgust, I won't bother to explain it again, and I will rip out your fucking throat.' Rhys said is so mildly that the threat took a second to register. To settle in me like a stone plunked into a pool. Lucien only shifted on his feet. Wary. Considering. I counted the heartbeats, debating how much I'd interfere if he said something truly stupid, when he at last murmured, 'There is a longer story to be told, it seems.

there was real pain in the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn’t close your heart completely, but you couldn’t leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

They were real, there was real pain in the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

They drove back to Paris on the assumption that they would be far less obvious among the crowds of the city than in an isolated country inn. A blond-haired man wearing tortoise-shell glasses, and a striking but stern-faced woman, devoid of makeup, and with her hair pulled back like an intense graduate student at the Sorbonne, were not out of place in Montmartre. They took a room at the Terrasse on the rue de Maistre, registering as a married couple from Brussels. In the room, they stood for a moment, no words necessary for what each was seeing and feeling. They came together, touching, holding, closing out the abusive world that refused them peace, that kept them balancing on taut wires next to one another, high above a dark abyss; if either fell, it was the end for both. Bourne could not change his color for the immediate moment. It would be false, and there was no room for artifice. “We need some rest,” he said. “We’ve got to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day.” They made love. Gently, completely, each with the other in the warm, rhythmic comfort of the bed. And there was a moment, a foolish moment, when adjustment of an angle was breathlessly necessary and they laughed. It was a quiet laugh, at first even an embarrassed laugh, but the observation was there, the appraisal of foolishness intrinsic to something very deep between them. They held each other more fiercely when the moment passed, more and more intent on sweeping away the awful sounds and the terrible sights of a dark world that kept them spinning in its winds. They were suddenly breaking out of that world, plunging into a much better one where sunlight and blue water replaced the darkness. They raced toward it feverishly, furiously, and then they burst through and found it. Spent, they fell asleep, their fingers entwined.

It opens all your senses. Your whole body screams that you can fly. ‘And I haven’t got any wings,’ it shouts to you, trying to drown the wind whistling past your ears. Your body is convinced it’s going to die and goes into full-alarm mode—opens all its senses to the max to see if any of them can find a way out. Your brain is the world’s biggest computer, it registers everything: your skin feels the temperature rising as you fall, your ears notice the increase in pressure and you become

Coriolanus acted engrossed in the show as 8, 6, and 11 called their tributes, but his brain spun with the repercussions of landing Lucy Gray Baird. She was a gift, he knew it, and he must treat her as such. But how best to exploit her showstopping entrance? How to wrangle some success from a dress, a snake, a song? The tributes would be given precious little time with the audience before the Games began. How could he get the audience to invest in her and, by extension, him, in just an interview? He half registered the other tributes, mostly pitiful creatures, and took note of the stronger ones. Sejanus got a towering fellow from District 2, and Livia’s District 1 boy looked like he could be a contender as well. Coriolanus’s girl seemed fairly healthy, but her slight build was more suited to dancing than hand-to-hand combat. He bet she could run fast enough, though, and that was important. As the reaping drew to a close, the smell of food from the buffet wafted over the audience

She looks me up and down and nods but I can’t tell if it’s with approval or not. “You like what you see?” “On the outside. And I already know that 'Beauty and the Beast' registers high in your pop culture appreciation, so there’s a chance I won’t run right out the door of this gym,” she says. I can't help but tease her a little. “Yeah, but we both know you don’t like to run.” “You gonna chase me if I do, Lane Myer?” “I might.” The way she arches an eyebrow at me would make a weaker man shrivel up and die. “See to it that you don’t make me want to run," she says.

The only people she ever spoke to were Pa now and then and, even less often, the cash-register lady at the Piggly Wiggly, Mrs. Singletary, who had recently taken to teaching Kya the difference between quarters, nickels, and dimes—she already knew about pennies. But Mrs. Singletary could also get nosey. “Dahlin’, what’s yo’ name, anyhow? And why don’t yo’ ma come in anymore? Haven’t seen ’er since the turnips put out.” “Ma’s got lots of chores, so she sends me to the store.” “Yeah, dear, but ya never buy nears enough for yo’ family.” “Ya know, ma’am, I gotta go. Ma needs these grits right away.

I lay back and closed my eyes and let my head sink into the water until it covered my face. I got the feeling I used to get as a child when I’d done this very thing: as if the known world of the bathroom had disappeared and become, through the simple act of submersion, a foreign and mysterious place. Its ordinary sounds and sensations turned muted, distant, abstract, while other sounds and sensations not normally heard or registered emerged. I had only just begun. I was three weeks into my hike, but everything in me felt altered. I lay in the water as long as I could without breathing, alone in a strange new land, while the actual world all around me hummed on.

In America, straightforward talk about class inequality is all but impossible, indeed taboo. Political appeals to the economic self-interest of ordinary voters, as distinct from their wealthy compatriots, court instant branding and disfigurement in the press as divisive “economic populism” or even “class warfare.”39 On the other hand, divisive political appeals composed in a different register, sometimes called “cultural populism,” enlist voters’ self-concept in place of their self-interest; appealing, in other words, to who they are and are not, rather than to what they require and why. Thus, the policies of the 1980s radically redistributed income upward. Then, with “economic populism” shooed from the public arena, “cultural populism” fielded something akin to a marching band. It had a simple melody about the need to enrich the “investing” classes (said to “create jobs”), and an encoded percussion: “culture wars”; “welfare mothers”; “underclass”; “race-and-IQ”; “black-on-black crime”; “criminal gene”; on and on.40 Halfway through the decade, as the band played on, a huge economic revolution from above had got well under way. The poorest 40 percent of American families were sharing 15.5 percent of household income, while the share of the richest 20 percent of families had risen to a record 43.7 percent, and the trend appeared to be (and has turned out to be) more and more of the same.41 The

Every time he moved, with every breath he took, it seemed the man was carried along by iridescent orange and black wings. She tried to convey how it was like travelling through the inside of a living body at times, the joints and folds of the earth, the liver-smooth flowstone, the helictites threading upward like synapses in search of a connection. She found it beautiful. Surely God would not have invented such a place as His spiritual gulag. It took Ali’s breath away. Sometimes, once men found out she was a nun, they would dare her in some way. What made Ike different was his abandon. He had a carelessness in his manner that was not reckless, but was full of risk. Winged. He was pursuing her, but not faster than she was pursuing him, and it made them like two ghosts circling. She ran her fingers along his back, and the bone and the muscle and hadal ink and scar tissue and the callouses from his pack straps astonished her. This was the body of a slave. Down from the Egypt, eye of the sun, in front of the Sinai, away from their skies like a sea inside out, their stars and planets spearing your soul, their cities like insects, all shell and mechanism, their blindness with eyes, their vertiginous plains and mind-crushing mountains. Down from the billions who had made the world in their own image. Their signature could be a thing of beauty. But it was a thing of death. Ali got one good look, then closed her eyes to the heat. In her mind, she imagined Ike sitting in the raft across from her wearing a vast grin while the pyre reflected off the lenses of his glacier glasses. That put a smile on her face. In death, he had become the light. There comes a time on every big mountain when you descend the snows and cross a border back to life. It is a first patch of green grass by the trail, or a waft of the forests far below, or the trickle of snowmelt braiding into a stream. Always before, whether he had been gone an hour or a week or much longer – and no matter how many mountains he had left behind – it was, for Ike, an instant that registered in his whole being. Ike was swept with a sense not of departure, but of advent. Not of survival. But of grace.

Guleed passed me the completed IIP on Caroline Linden-Limmer and pointed out a note which registered that she’d been granted a Gender Recognition Certificate when she was eighteen – changing her legal gender from male to female. ‘So . . .’ I started, but was cut off by the vast silence emanating from Stephanopoulos behind us. I looked over at Nightingale, who looked quizzically back, and decided to explain the implications later. Surprisingly, when I did, his reaction was outrage that somebody had to apply to a panel to determine what gender they were – he didn’t say it, but I got the strong impression that he felt such panels were intrinsically un-British. Like eugenics legislation, banning the burka and air conditioning.

My wife has been on my tail six weeks with a blackmail gag,” he went on. “She’s here. When I got back to the hotel a little while ago she came into my room and put on an act.” I thought then I knew who Gard’s client was. “She came in this afternoon. She’s got the room next to mine.” He was silent so long that I laughed a little and said: “So what?” “I’ve got to duck, quick,” he went on. “She’s a bad actor. She came into my room and put on an act. She’s got a guy with her that’s supposed to be her brother and he’s a bad actor, too. You said you were going to drive back to LA. I saw your name on the register when I came in and I thought you might take me along. I can’t rent a car here and there isn’t a train till midnight.” He pulled the biggest roll I ever saw out of his pocket and skimmed off a couple notes. “If it’s a question of money …

There was nothing like an extra helping of guilt to cool a man's blood.And it was guilt as much as the hot food and the glass of good wine that got Brian through the evening in the Grant kitchen. The size of it left little room for lust, considering. There was Adelia Grant giving him a warm greeting as if he was welcome to swing in for dinner anytime he had the whim, and Travis getting out an extra plate himself-as if he waited on employees five days a week-and saying that there was plenty to go around as Brendon had other plans for dinner. Before he knew it, he was sitting down, having food heaped in front of him and being asked how his day had been.And not in a way that expected a report. He didn't know what to do about it. He liked these people, genuinely liked them. And there he was lusting after their daughter. An alley mutt after a registered purebred.

How long have you been a financial advisor? At least ten years is what you want to hear. Experience is an important factor. You want to know that the person giving you advice has been through good and bad economic times. What certificates, licenses, or accreditations do you have? Your advisor has got to be licensed to give you advice. Nobody, and I mean nobody, should be giving financial advice in any way, shape, or form if they have not taken the time to get the necessary credentials to give you that advice. At the very least, you want your advisor to have one if not more of the following certifications and licenses: ~ CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) ~ Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) ~ Personal Financial Specialist (PFS) ~ NAPFA-Registered Financial Advisor ~ Financial Planning Association (FPA) ~ A Series 7 license ~ A Series 6 license ~ Registered Investment Advisors License

Tate was sprawled across the bed in his robe early the next morning when the sound of the front door opening penetrated his mind. There was an unholy commotion out there and his head was still throbbing, despite a bath, several cups of coffee and a handful of aspirin that had been forced on him the day before by two men he’d thought were his friends. He didn’t want to sober up. He only wanted to forget that Cecily didn’t want him anymore. He dragged himself off the bed and went into the living room, just in time to hear the door close. Cecily and her suitcase were standing with mutual rigidity just inside the front door. She was wearing a dress and boots and a coat and hat, red-faced and muttering words Tate had never heard her use before. He scowled. “How did you get here?” he asked. “Your boss brought me!” she raged. “He and that turncoat Colby Lane and two bodyguards, one of whom was the female counterpart of Ivan the Terrible! They forcibly dressed me and packed me and flew me up here on Mr. Hutton’s Learjet! When I refused to get out of the car, the male bodyguard swept me up and carried me here! I am going to kill people as soon as I get my breath and my wits back, and I am starting with you!” He leaned against the wall, still bleary-eyed and only half awake. She was beautiful with her body gently swollen and her lips pouting and her green eye sin their big-lensed frames glittering at him. She registered after a minute that he wasn’t himself. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked abruptly. He didn’t answer. He put a hand to his head. “You’re drunk!” she exclaimed in shock. “I have been,” he replied in a subdued tone. “For about a week, I think. Pierce and Colby got my landlord to let them in yesterday.” She smiled dimly. “I’d made some threats about what I’d do if he ever let anybody else into my apartment, after he let Audrey in the last time. I guess he believed them, because Colby had to flash his company ID to get in.” He chuckled weakly. “Nothing intimidates the masses like a CIA badge, even if it isn’t current.” “You’ve been drunk?” She moved a little closer into the apartment. “But, Tate, you don’t…you don’t drink,” she said. “I do now. The mother of my child won’t marry me,” he said simply. “I said you could have access…” His black eyes slid over her body like caressing hands. He’d missed her unbearably. Just the sight of her was calming now. “So you did.” Why did the feel guilty, for God’s sake, she wondered. She tried to recapture her former outrage. “I’ve been kidnapped!” “Apparently. Don’t look at me. Until today, I was too stoned to lift my head.” He looked around. “I guess they threw out the beer cans and the pizza boxes,” he murmured. “Pity. I think there was a slice of pizza left.” He sighed. “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.” “Yesterday!

Don’t ask where I got this idea, because I couldn’t tell you, but I knew precisely where we were going, and I was sure that this might officially make me a slut. But when we reached the door of the unused janitor’s closet, I had no feeling of shame… not yet, at least. I grasped the doorknob and noticed Wesley’s eyes narrow with suspicion. I yanked open the door, checked that no one was watching, and gestured for him to go inside. Wesley walked into the tiny closet, and I followed, shutting the door stealthily behind us. “Something tells me this isn’t about The Scarlet Letter,” he said, and even in the dark I knew he was grinning. “Be quiet.” This time he met me halfway. His hands tangled in my hair and mine clawed at his forearms. We kissed violently, and my back slammed against the wall. I heard a mop-or maybe a broom-topple over, but my brain barely registered the sound as one of Wesley’s hands moved to my hip, holding me closer to him. He was so much taller than me that I had to tilt my head back almost all the way to meet his kiss. His lips pressed hard against mine, and I let my hands explore his biceps. The smell of his cologne, rather than the lonely, stale air of the closet, filled my senses. We wrestled in the darkness for a while before I felt his hand insistently lifting the hem of my T-shirt. With a gasp, I pulled away from the kiss and grabbed his wrist. “No… not now.” “Then when?” Wesley asked in my ear, still pinning me to the wall. He didn’t even sound winded. I, on the other hand, struggled to catch my breath. “Later.” “Be more specific.” I squirmed out of his arms and moved toward the door, nearly tripping over what felt like a bucket. I raised a hand to flatten my wavy hair and reached for the doorknob. “Tonight. I’ll be at your house around seven. Okay?” But before he could answer, I slipped out of the closet and hurried down the hall, hoping it didn’t look like a walk of shame.

Let’s consider another similar story — the dating website Plenty of Fish. German programmer Markus Frind started the company in 2003 as a programming exercise. He had been wanting to learn a new coding language called ASP.NET, so he built the site in two weeks — and to his surprise, it took off. Frind never raised a dime of outside money, because the venture was profitable from the beginning. “I didn’t see the need to raise money because I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he said in a 2015 interview with Business Insider. “It was a profitable company, and there was no need to raise money.”3 Plenty of Fish grew slowly and organically for more than 10 years, eventually growing to about 75 employees and 90 million registered users. In 2015, Match Group (which also owns dating sites Match.com and OKCupid) bought Plenty of Fish for $575 million. “It wasn’t like I had a plan to create a dating site,” Frind said. “It was just a side project I created that got really big.” Not bad for what started as a hobby.

By the time Bond had taken in these details, he had come to within fifty yards of the two men. He was reflecting on the ranges of various types of weapon and the possibilities of cover when an extraordinary and terrible scene was enacted. Red-man seemed to give a short nod to Blue-man. With a quick movement Blue-man unslung his blue camera case. Blue-man, and Bond could not see exactly as the trunk of a plane-tree beside him just then intervened to obscure his vision, bent forward and seemed to fiddle with the case. Then with a blinding flash of white light there was the ear-splitting crack of a monstrous explosion and Bond, despite the protection of the tree-trunk, was slammed down to the pavement by a solid bolt of hot air which dented his cheeks and stomach as if they had been made of paper. He lay, gazing up at the sun, while the air (or so it seemed to him) went on twanging with the explosion as if someone had hit the bass register of a piano with a sledgehammer. When, dazed and half-conscious, he raised himself on one knee, a ghastly rain of pieces of flesh and shreds of blood-soaked clothing fell on him and around him, mingled with branches and gravel. Then a shower of small twigs and leaves. From all sides came the sharp tinkle of falling glass. Above in the sky hung a mushroom of black smoke which rose and dissolved as he drunkenly watched it. There was an obscene smell of high explosive, of burning wood, and of, yes, that was it – roast mutton. For fifty yards down the boulevard the trees were leafless and charred. Opposite, two of them had snapped off near the base and lay drunkenly across the road. Between them there was a still smoking crater. Of the two men in straw hats, there remained absolutely nothing. But there were red traces on the road, and on the pavements and against the trunks of the trees, and there were glittering shreds high up in the branches. Bond felt himself starting to vomit. It was Mathis who got to him first, and by that time Bond was standing with his arm round the tree which had saved his life.

He got up out of bed, walked across the room, and put his glowing hand to her face with hesitation. On a sigh she leaned into the imprint of his palm and the warmth of his flesh. “Is this you?” he said hoarsely. She nodded and reached out to his cheeks, which were a little red. “You’ve been crying.” He captured her hand. “I feel you.” “Me, too.” He touched her neck, her shoulder, her sternum. Brought her arm forward and looked at it…well, through it. “Um…so I can sit on things,” she said for no particular reason. “I mean…while I was waiting out there, I sat on the couch. I also moved a picture on the wall, put a penny back in your change dish, picked up a magazine. It’s a little weird, but all I have to do is concentrate.” Shit. She had no idea what she was saying. “The, ah…the Scribe Virgin said I could eat but I didn’t have to. She said…I could drink, too. I’m not sure how it all works, but she seems to know. Yeah. So. Anyway, I think it’s going to take some time to figure out the drill, but…” He put his hand into her hair and it felt the same as it had before. Her nonexistent body registered the sensations exactly as it had before. He frowned, then looked downright angry. “She said it required a sacrifice. To bring someone back. What did you give her? What did you bargain with?” “How do you mean?” “She doesn’t give things away without demanding something in return. What did she take from you?” “Nothing. She never asked me for anything.” He shook his head and seemed like he was going to speak. But then he wrapped his heavy arms around her and held her against his trembling, glowing body. Unlike the other times when she had to concentrate to find solidity, with V it just happened. Against him, she was corporeal with no effort on her part. She could tell he was crying by the way he breathed and the fact that he leaned on her, but she knew that if she made any mention of it, or tried to soothe him with words, he would stop on a dime. So she just held him and let him go. Then again, she was kind of busy holding herself together. “I thought I would never get to do this again,” he said in a voice that cracked. -Vishous & Jane

A guy comes to the lab. You lead him into a quiet room, sit him down in a comfortable chair, and leave him alone in front of a television. He straps a “strain gauge” (which is exactly what it sounds like) to his penis, puts a tray over his lap, and takes hold of a dial that he can tune up and down to register his arousal (“I feel a little aroused,” “I feel a lot aroused,” etc.). Then he starts watching a variety of porn segments. Some of it is romantic, some is violent, some matches his sexual orientation, some doesn’t. Some of it isn’t even humans, it’s bonobos copulating. He rates his level of arousal on the dial as he watches, and the device on his penis measures his erection. Then you look at the data to see how much of a match there is between how aroused he felt—his “subjective arousal”—and how erect he got—his “genital response.” Result: There will be about a 50 percent overlap between his genital response and his subjective arousal. It’s far from a perfect one-to-one correlation, but in behavioral science it’s exciting to find a relationship that strong. It’s highly statistically significant.

Where does that door lead to?” Day pointed at a door which opened out onto the dark alley. “I looked it up. It appears to be a small film studio,” the other officer finally stopped staring at God long enough to add to the conversation. “Porn films.” Day looked up in amusement. “Shut the fuck up.” The two cops nodded. “That’s what we pulled up in the system. We went around to the front. It’s locked and no one’s inside. We called the number registered to the address, but got no answer.” “Who’s the owner of the company?” God asked. The officer flipped a couple pages on his notebook. “Illustra is owned by Johnathan Mack. We also have a list of all the performers and staff.” Day looked at God. “I bet that little vixen we just apprehended has a recurring role here. Wonder what made her so mad that she wanted to kill someone as soon as she finished fucking.” “Maybe she didn’t get to come.” Ronowski chuckled, joined by several of the team members. Syn grimaced. “Yeah, that might make you homicidal alright,” Day added. “But I wouldn’t know.” “Day, shut the fuck up,” God barked at his lover's usual inappropriateness. It seemed Day had never met a boundary he didn't stomp right over.

So I was just sitting in the dining room feeling sorry for myself. “What am I going to do?” Almost as soon as I asked that question, the answer came. “End it all.” Oh, I don’t know what possessed me. I really don’t have any idea at all. But I got up and walked over to a window. Well, that window was painted shut, so I went to another window. That one led out to a gangway, a stairwell, where I figured no one would find me until my body started to smell. No, that wouldn’t do. I looked at the front windows. One was a picture window that didn’t open, but then I couldn’t jump from those windows on the sides, either. Children played out front and that would be so traumatic for them. Besides, after I thought about it a little more, I realized something else that was very important: I wasn’t wearing pants. I didn’t wear pants back then. I was wearing a dress that Mama had made for me. Oh, I remember that dress. It was sleeveless, real tight in the waist with a long flared skirt. It was a white dress, white with a floral pattern, some kind of design in it, and that design was pink. That was one of my favorite dresses. I couldn’t stand the thought of jumping in that dress. More important, I couldn’t stand the thought that my skirt might fly up. Just then, as I was thinking about all that, the phone rang. It was a reporter. He was thinking about doing a follow-up story on me and he wanted to know what I was planning to do. Well, I couldn’t tell him I was planning to jump out the window. So I said I wanted to go back to school and become a teacher. I turned around as if to ask, “Who said that?” Now, I don’t know to this day where it came from, but he said he would take me to register for classes. I mean, he was just going to carry me down to the college and walk me through it. That was fine with me, because I didn’t even know where to go. I hadn’t exactly given this a whole lot of thought. As it turns out, the place to go was Chicago Teachers College. He took me there and, unfortunately, we were told that registration for classes had just closed. Before I even got a chance to start thinking about those windows back home again, he somehow convinced them to admit just one more student, and that’s how it all started. That’s how I was able to start over. I was going to go to college. I was going to become a teacher. I would be able to work with children, to teach them, to help shape them, to introduce them to a whole world of possibilities. In the process, a whole world of possibilities was opening up to me. Throughout my life I have heard a great many stories about how people received the call to their life’s mission. I have to smile when I recall how I received mine. For me, the call came by phone, from a reporter.

Please, Holy Mother God,” I whispered in prayer, “help me cut the invisible cords that bind me, and set me free. Give me the inner strength to let go of all that I have created up until now, on every level, and which no longer reflects the highest path for me, and for those I love and serve. Help calm my more masculine energies so I can settle into my own divine feminine nature and cool the angry fires of hurt and fear that have burned in my heart for so long.” After making my prayerful request, I got up and lit a candle to the Divine Mother, to say “thank you” for hearing me. I was ready to surrender. I knew it was time to release control over my life and let God take over. I spoke my intention aloud: “This life of mine is now finished. My present way is no longer serving me or allowing my greater Spirit to express through me. I ask for the cocoon to break open and free my true divine light. I surrender all attachments on all levels to the past and am now ready for what the Universe has in store for me. And so it is.” At that moment time stood still. I knew my intention was heard and registered by the heavens, and that my request would be honored and met with divine support. I sensed an inner shift take place in me. I didn’t feel euphoric. I didn’t even feel happy. Rather, I felt somber and quiet in spite of the thousand sounds swirling around me, the Universe saying, Okay, get ready. The next morning, I suddenly had a powerful intuitive hit from my Higher Self that said, “Sonia, it is time to heal your life, and the only way to do that is to walk the Camino de Santiago. And go alone.

Who’s the guy?” “What guy?” “The guy you’re dating.” That’s when I see him. Peter Kavinsky, walking down the hallway. Like magic. Beautiful, dark-haired Peter. He deserves background music, he looks so good. “Peter. Kavinsky. Peter Kavinsky!” The bell rings, and I sail past Josh. “I’ve gotta go! Talk later, Josh!” “Wait!” he calls out. I run up to Peter and launch myself into his arms like a shot out of a cannon. I’ve got my arms around his neck and my legs hooked around his waist, and I don’t even know how my body knows how, because I’ve for sure never touched a boy like this in my life. It’s like we’re in a movie and the music is swelling and waves are crashing around us. Except for the fact that Peter’s expression is registering pure shock and disbelief and maybe a drop of amusement, because Peter likes to be amused. Raising his eyebrows, he says, “Lara Jean? What the--?” I don’t answer. I just kiss him. My first thought is: I have muscle memory of his lips. My second thought is: I hope Josh is watching. He has to be watching or it’s all for nothing. My heart is beating so fast I forget to be afraid of doing it wrong. Because for about three seconds, he’s kissing me back. Peter Kavinsky, the boy of every girl’s dreams, is kissing me back. I haven’t kissed that many boys before. Peter Kavinsky, John Ambrose McClaren, Allie Feldman’s cousin with the weird eye, and now Peter again. I open my eyes and Peter’s staring at me with that same expression on his face. Very sincerely I say, “Thank you.” He replies, “You’re welcome,” and I hop out of his arms and sprint off in the opposite direction.

It got to the point where he didn’t even look up at the sky any more as he blundered back and forth. The human mind had evolved for just one universe, he thought. How much of this crap was he supposed to take? He felt exhausted, resentful, bewildered. “Wait.” He paused. He had loped out of the portal onto another stretch of scuffed, anonymous regolith. She was lying in his arms, her weight barely registering. He looked down into her face, and pushed up her gold sun visor. “Emma?” She licked her lips. “Look. Up there.” No Galaxy visible, but a starry sky. The stars looked, well, normal. But he’d learned that meant little. “So what?” Emma was lifting her arm, pointing. He saw three stars, dull white points, in a row. And there was a rough rectangle of stars around them—one of them a distinctive red—and what looked like a Galaxy disc, or maybe just a nebula, beneath … “Holy shit,” he said. She whispered, “There must be lots of universes like ours. But, surely to God, there is only one Orion.” And then light, dazzling, unbearably brilliant, came stabbing over the close horizon. It was a sunrise. He could actually feel its heat through the layers of his suit. He looked down at the ground at his feet. The rising light cast strong shadows, sharply illuminating the miniature crevices and craters there. And here was a “crater” that was elongated, and neatly ribbed. It was a footprint. He stepped forward, lifted his foot, and set it down in the print. It fit neatly. When he lifted his foot away the cleats of his boot hadn’t so much as disturbed a regolith grain. It was his own footprint. Good grief. After hundreds of universes of silence and remoteness and darkness, universes of dim light and shadows, he was right back where he started.

So you hook up with strangers?" Liam asked in a hushed whisper as the cashier rang up their order. "Were you with someone last night?" "Yes. His name is Max." She pulled out her phone. "I have a selfie of us together." She held it up for the cashier to see, keeping the screen away from Liam's line of vision. "Oh, he's gorgeous," the cashier said. "He's got the nicest eyes." "Let me see." Liam felt his protective instincts rise. "Who is he? Max who?" "He doesn't have a last name." "Jesus Christ, Daisy," he spluttered. "Does Sanjay know you do this? What about your dad?" "They know all about Max," Daisy said. "In fact, my dad took a picture of us cuddled together in bed the night before he left on his trip, and the cutest one of Max on my pillow. I bought some pajamas but he refused to wear them. He likes to sleep au naturel." Bile rose in Liam's throat. "And your dad took... pictures?" "Photography is his new hobby. He took some great shots when I was giving Max a bath..." "Stop." Liam held up a hand. "Just... I can't. I don't know what's happened to you, but it ends now. We're engaged and that means no more random hookups, no pornographic pictures, and no flashing pictures of strangers in the nude." "Amina doesn't mind. She's my second cousin." Daisy introduced them before turning her phone around. "And this is Max." Liam was a heartbeat away from shutting his eyes when his brain registered the picture of a fluffy white dog on a pink duvet. His tension left him in a rush. "Max is a dog." "He's a Westie. Layla got him for me as an emotional support dog at a bad time in my life." Liam bit back the urge to ask Daisy about a time so bad she'd needed extra love. It was her business, and he could only hope she would tell him when she was ready so he could offer his support. "That wasn't funny." "Amina and I were amused." "I heard you were engaged." Amina's gaze flicked to Liam and she blushed. "He's almost as cute as Max.

Curtis Bane screamed and though I came around fast and fired in the same motion, he’d already pulled a heater and begun pumping metal at me. We both missed and I was empty, that drum clicking uselessly. I went straight at him. Happily, he too was out of bullets and I closed the gap and slammed the butt of the rifle into his chest. Should’ve knocked him down, but no. The bastard was squat and powerful as a wild animal, thanks to being a coke fiend, no doubt. He ripped the rifle from my grasp and flung it aside. He locked his fists and swung them up into my chin, and it was like getting clobbered with a hammer, and I sprawled into a row of trash cans. Stars zipped through my vision. A leather cosh dropped from his sleeve into his hand and he knew what to do with it all right. He swung it in a short chopping blow at my face and I got my left hand up and the blow snapped my two smallest fingers, and he swung again and I turned my head just enough that it only squashed my ear and you better believe that hurt, but now I’d drawn the sawback bayonet I kept strapped to my hip, a fourteen-inch grooved steel blade with notched and pitted edges—Jesus-fuck who knew how many Yankee boys the Kraut who’d owned it gashed before I did for him—and stabbed it to the guard into Bane’s groin. Took a couple of seconds for Bane to register it was curtains. His face whitened and his mouth slackened, breath steaming in the chill, his evil soul coming untethered. He had lots of gold fillings. He lurched away and I clutched his sleeve awkwardly with my broken hand and rose, twisting the handle of the blade side to side, turning it like a car crank into his guts and bladder, putting my shoulder and hip into it for leverage. He moaned in panic and dropped the cosh and pried at my wrist, but the strength was draining from him and I slammed him against the wall and worked the handle with murderous joy. The cords of his neck went taut and he looked away, as if embarrassed, eyes milky, a doomed petitioner gaping at Hell in all its fiery majesty. I freed the blade with a cork-like pop and blood spurted down his leg in a nice thick stream and he collapsed, folding into himself like a bug does when it dies.

NBC News reporter David Gregory was on a tear. Lecturing the NRA president—and the rest of the world—on the need for gun restrictions, the D.C. media darling and host of NBC’s boring Sunday morning gabfest, Meet the Press, Gregory displayed a thirty-round magazine during an interview. This was a violation of District of Columbia law, which specifically makes it illegal to own, transfer, or sell “high-capacity ammunition.” Conservatives demanded the Mr. Gregory, a proponent of strict gun control laws, be arrested and charged for his clear violation of the laws he supports. Instead the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Irv Nathan, gave Gregory a pass: Having carefully reviewed all of the facts and circumstances of this matter, as it does in every case involving firearms-related offenses or any other potential violation of D.C. law within our criminal jurisdiction, OAG has determined to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline to bring criminal charges against Mr. Gregory, who has no criminal record, or any other NBC employee based on the events associated with the December 23, 2012 broadcast. What irked people even more was the attorney general admitted that NBC had willfully violated D.C. law. As he noted: No specific intent is required for this violation, and ignorance of the law or even confusion about it is no defense. We therefore did not rely in making our judgment on the feeble and unsatisfactory efforts that NBC made to determine whether or not it was lawful to possess, display and broadcast this large capacity magazine as a means of fostering the public policy debate. Although there appears to have been some misinformation provided initially, NBC was clearly and timely advised by an MPD employee that its plans to exhibit on the broadcast a high capacity-magazine would violate D.C. law. David Gregory gets a pass, but not Mark Witaschek. Witaschek was the subject of not one but two raids on his home by D.C. police. The second time that police raided Witaschek’s home, they did so with a SWAT team and even pulled his terrified teenage son out of the shower. They found inoperable muzzleloader bullets (replicas, not live ammunition, no primer) and an inoperable shotgun shell, a tchotchke from a hunting trip. Witaschek, in compliance with D.C. laws, kept his guns out of D.C. and at a family member’s home in Virginia. It wasn’t good enough for the courts, who tangled him up in a two-year court battle that he fought on principle but eventually lost. As punishment, the court forced him to register as a gun offender, even though he never had a firearm in the city. Witaschek is listed as a “gun offender”—not to be confused with “sex offender,” though that’s exactly the intent: to draw some sort of correlation, to make possession of a common firearm seem as perverse as sexual offenses. If only Mark Witaschek got the break that David Gregory received.

I stared through the front door at Barrons Books and Baubles, uncertain what surprised me more: that the front seating cozy was intact or that Barrons was sitting there, boots propped on a table, surrounded by piles of books, hand-drawn maps tacked to the walls. I couldn’t count how many nights I’d sat in exactly the same place and position, digging through books for answers, occasionally staring out the windows at the Dublin night, and waiting for him to appear. I liked to think he was waiting for me to show. I leaned closer, staring in through the glass. He’d refurnished the bookstore. How long had I been gone? There was my magazine rack, my cashier’s counter, a new old-fashioned cash register, a small flat-screen TV/DVD player that was actually from this decade, and a sound dock for my iPod. There was a new sleek black iPod Nano in the dock. He’d done more than refurnish the place. He might as well have put a mat out that said WELCOME HOME, MAC. A bell tinkled as I stepped inside. His head whipped around and he half-stood, books sliding to the floor. The last time I’d seen him, he was dead. I stood in the doorway, forgetting to breathe, watching him unfold from the couch in a ripple of animal grace. He crammed the four-story room full, dwarfed it with his presence. For a moment neither of us spoke. Leave it to Barrons—the world melts down and he’s still dressed like a wealthy business tycoon. His suit was exquisite, his shirt crisp, tie intricately patterned and tastefully muted. Silver glinted at his wrist, that familiar wide cuff decorated with ancient Celtic designs he and Ryodan both wore. Even with all my problems, my knees still went weak. I was suddenly back in that basement. My hands were tied to the bed. He was between my legs but wouldn’t give me what I wanted. He used his mouth, then rubbed himself against my clitoris and barely pushed inside me before pulling out, then his mouth, then him, over and over, watching my eyes the whole time, staring down at me. What am I, Mac? he’d say. My world, I’d purr, and mean it. And I was afraid that, even now that I wasn’t Pri-ya, I’d be just as out of control in bed with him as I was then. I’d melt, I’d purr, I’d hand him my heart. And I would have no excuse, nothing to blame it on. And if he got up and walked away from me and never came back to my bed, I would never recover. I’d keeping waiting for a man like him, and there were no other men like him. I’d have to die old and alone, with the greatest sex of my life a painful memory. So, you’re alive, his dark eyes said. Pisses me off, the wondering. Do something about that. Like what? Can’t all be like you, Barrons. His eyes suddenly rushed with shadows and I couldn’t make out a single word. Impatience, anger, something ancient and ruthless. Cold eyes regarded me with calculation, as if weighing things against each other, meditating—a word Daddy used to point out was the larger part of premeditation. He’d say, Baby, once you start thinking about it, you’re working your way toward it. Was there something Barrons was working his way toward doing? I shivered.

China during the Mao era was a poor country, but it had a strong public health network that provided free immunizations to its citizens. That was where I came in. In those days there were no disposable needles and syringes; we had to reuse ours again and again. Sterilization too was primitive: The needles and syringes would be washed, wrapped separately in gauze, and placed in aluminum lunch boxes laid in a huge wok on top of a briquette stove. Water was added to the wok, and the needles and syringes were then steamed for two hours, as you would steam buns. On my first day of giving injections I went to a factory. The workers rolled up their sleeves and waited in line, baring their arms to me one after another – and offering up a tiny piece of red flesh, too. Because the needles had been used multiple times, almost every one of them had a barbed tip. You could stick a needle into someone’s arm easily enough, but when you extracted it, you would pull out a tiny piece of flesh along with it. For the workers the pain was bearable, although they would grit their teeth or perhaps let out a groan or two. I paid them no mind, for the workers had had to put up with barbed needles year after year and should be used to it by now, I thought. But the next day, when I went to a kindergarten to give shot to children from the ages of three through six, it was a difference story. Every last one of them burst out weeping and wailing. Because their skin was so tender, the needles would snag bigger shreds of flesh than they had from the workers, and the children’s wounds bled more profusely. I still remember how the children were all sobbing uncontrollably; the ones who had yet to be inoculated were crying even louder than those who had already had their shots. The pain the children saw others suffering, it seemed to me, affected them even more intensely than the pain they themselves experienced, because it made their fear all the more acute. That scene left me shocked and shaken. When I got back to the hospital, I did not clean the instruments right away. Instead, I got hold of a grindstone and ground all the needles until they were completely straight and the points were sharp. But these old needles were so prone to metal fatigue that after two or three more uses they would acquire barbs again, so grinding the needles became a regular part of my routine, and the more I sharpened, the shorter they got. That summer it was always dark by the time I left the hospital, with fingers blistered by my labors at the grindstone. Later, whenever I recalled this episode, I was guilt-stricken that I’d had to see the children’s reaction to realize how much the factory workers must have suffered. If, before I had given shots to others, I had pricked my own arm with a barbed needle and pulled out a blood-stained shred of my own flesh, then I would have known how painful it was long before I heard the children’s wails. This remorse left a profound mark, and it has stayed with me through all my years as an author. It is when the suffering of others becomes part of my own experience that I truly know what it is to live and what it is to write. Nothing in the world, perhaps, is so likely to forge a connection between people as pain, because the connection that comes from that source comes from deep in the heart. So when in this book I write of China’s pain, I am registering my pain too, because China’s pain is mine.

I love it when you can’t control yourself,” she whispered. “I love having you at my mercy. You have no idea…how much I enjoy seeing Dom the Almighty brought low.” He barely registered her words. What she was doing felt so good. So bloody damned good. If she stroked him much more… “I want to be inside you.” He gripped her wrist. “Please, Jane…” Her sensuous smile faltered. “You’ve never said ‘please’ to me before. Not in your whole life.” “Really?” Had he only ever issued orders? If so, no wonder she’d refused him last night. Perhaps it was time to show her she didn’t have to seduce him to gain control. That he could give up his control freely…to her, at least. “Then let me say it now. Please, Jane, make love to me. If you don’t mind.” She stared at him. “I…I don’t know what you mean.” He nodded to his cock, which looked downright ecstatic over the idea. “Get up on your knees and fit me inside you.” Realizing he’d just issued yet another order, he added, “Please. If you want.” Jane got that sultry look on her face again. Like the little seductress she was rapidly showing herself to be, she rose up and then came down on him. By degrees. Very slow degrees. He had trouble breathing. “Am I hurting you?” Her smile broadened as she shimmied down another inch. “Not really.” Stifling a curse, he clutched her arms. “You just…enjoy torturing me.” “Absolutely,” she said and moved his hands to cover her breasts. He was more than happy to oblige her unspoken request, happy to thumb her nipples and watch as her lovely mouth fell open and a moan of pure pleasure escaped her. His cock swelled, and he thrust up involuntarily. “Please…” he said hoarsely. “Please, Jane…” With a choked laugh, she sheathed herself on him. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh, that feels amazing.” “It would feel more amazing if you…would move,” he rasped, though the mere sensation of being buried inside her was making him insane. When she arched an eyebrow, he added, “Please.” “I could get to like this,” she said teasingly. “The begging.” But even as he groaned, she began to move, like the sensual creature that she was. His sweetheart undulated atop him, her head thrown back and her eyes sliding closed, and for the first time in his life, he was happy to give himself up to someone else’s control. To relish her pleasure, which was also his pleasure. Somehow he’d stumbled into paradise, ruled by his own personal angel. His own personal siren. “You like having me…in your power, do you?” he said. “Yes, oh, yes.” Her eyes brightened as she rode him, harder, faster. “Say it again.” “What?” He could hardly think for watching her take him. For being inside her so deeply he fancied he could feel her heart, her very soul. “Please.” Her face was flushed, rapt. “Say…’please’ again.” “Please.” Why had he never thought to say it before? This was all he’d ever wanted--to have the enthralling, intoxicating Jane in his arms, in his life. Forever. A “please” from time to time was little enough to give for that. “Please, my wanton angel.” He clutched her close, his rhythm quickening. “Please…be mine. Please…marry me.” His release approached like a carriage thundering toward the heavens. Toward paradise. And as the blood roared in his ears, he plunged his cock deeply and emptied himself inside her, crying, “Please…Jane…love me!” “I do.” With a hoarse cry of her own, she strained against him and found her own release, milking his cock with the force of it. “I do, my darling…I do.

Are-are you leaving?” She saw his shoulders stiffen at the sound of her voice, and when he turned and looked at her, she could almost feel the effort he was exerting to keep his rage under control. “You’re leaving,” he bit out. In silent, helpless protest Elizabeth shook her head and started slowly across the carpet, dimly aware that this was worse, much worse than merely standing up in front of several hundred lords in the House. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” he warned softly. “Do-do what?” Elizabeth said shakily. “Get any nearer to me.” She stopped cold, her mind registering the physical threat in his voice, refusing to believe it, her gaze searching his granite features. “Ian,” she began, stretching her hand out in a gesture of mute appeal, then letting it fall to her side when her beseeching move got nothing from him but a blast of contempt from his eyes. “I realize,” she began again, her voice trembling with emotion while she tried to think how to begin to diffuse his wrath, “that you must despise me for what I’ve done.” “You’re right.” “But,” Elizabeth continued bravely, “I am prepared to do anything, anything to try to atone for it. No matter how it must seem to you now, I never stopped loving-“ His voice cracked like a whiplash. “Shut up!” “No, you have to listen to me,” she said, speaking more quickly now, driven by panic and an awful sense of foreboding that nothing she could do or say would ever make him soften. “I never stopped loving you, even when I-“ “I’m warning you, Elizabeth,” he said in a murderous voice, “shut up and get out! Get out of my house and out of my life!” “Is-is it Robert? I mean, do you not believe Robert was the man I was with?” “I don’t give a damn who the son of a bitch was.” Elizabeth began to quake in genuine terror, because he meant that-she could see that he did. “It was Robert, exactly as I said,” she continued haltingly. “I can prove it to you beyond any doubt, if you’ll let me.” He laughed at that, a short, strangled laugh that was more deadly and final than his anger had been. “Elizabeth, I wouldn’t believe you if I’d seen you with him. Am I making myself clear? You are a consummate liar and a magnificent actress.” “If you’re saying that be-because of the foolish things I said in the witness box, you s-surely must know why I did it.” His contemptuous gaze raked her. “Of course I know why you did it! It was a means to an end-the same reason you’ve had for everything you do. You’d sleep with a snake if it gave you a means to an end.” “Why are you saying this?” she cried. “Because on the same day your investigator told you I was responsible for your brother’s disappearance, you stood beside me in a goddamned church and vowed to love me unto death! You were willing to marry a man you believed could be a murderer, to sleep with a murderer.” “You don’t believe that! I can prove it somehow-I know I can, if you’ll just give me a chance-“ “No.” “Ian-“ “I don’t want proof.” “I love you,” she said brokenly. “I don’t want your ‘love,’ and I don’t want you. Now-“ He glanced up when Dolton knocked on the door. “Mr. Larimore is here, my lord.” “Tell him I’ll be with him directly,” Ian announced, and Elizabeth gaped at him. “You-you’re going to have a business meeting now?” “Not exactly, my love. I’ve sent for Larimore for a different reason this time.” Nameless fright quaked down Elizabeth’s spine at his tone. “What-what other reason would you have for summoning a solicitor at a time like this?” “I’m starting divorce proceedings, Elizabeth.” “You’re what?” she breathed, and she felt the room whirl. “On what grounds-my stupidity?” “Desertion,” he bit out.

You’re all I want, Jane.” As he stroked her, he used his other hand to brush hers away so he could unfasten his own trouser buttons. “The only woman I ever cared about.” “You’re the only man Iever cared about.” She undulated against his fingers, begging for him with her body. “Why do you think…I waited for you so long?” “Not long enough, apparently,” he muttered, “or you wouldn’t have gotten yourself engaged to Blakeborough.” He tugged at her nipple with his teeth, then relished her cry of pleasure. “I only…did it because I was…tired of waiting.” She arched against his mouth. “Because you clearly weren’t…coming back for me.” “I was sure you hated me.” At last he got his trousers open. “You acted like you hated me still.” “I did.” Her breath was unsteady. “But only because…you tore us apart.” He shifted her to sit astride him. “And now?” Flashing him a provocative smile he would never have dreamed she had in her repertoire, she unbuttoned his drawers. “Do I look like I hate you?” His cock, so hard he thought it might erupt right there and embarrass him, sprang free. “You look like…like…” He paused to take in her lovely face with its flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, and lush lips. Then he swept his gaze down to her breasts with their brazen tips, displayed so enticingly above the boned corset and her undone shift. He then dropped his eyes to the smooth thighs emerging from beneath her bunched-up skirts. Shoving the fabric higher, he exposed her dewy thatch of curls, and a shudder of anticipation shook him. “You look like an angel.” She uttered a breathy laugh. “A wanton, more like.” Taking his cock in her hand, she stroked it so wonderfully that he groaned. “Would an angel do this?” His cock was a rod of iron. “Jane…” He covered her hand to stay it, but she ignored his attempt. “I love it when you can’t control yourself,” she whispered. “I love having you at my mercy. You have no idea…how much I enjoy seeing Dom the Almighty brought low.” He barely registered her words. What she was doing felt so good. So bloody damned good. If she stroked him much more… “I want to be inside you.” He gripped her wrist. “Please, Jane…” Her sensuous smile faltered. “You’ve never said ‘please’ to me before. Not in your whole life.” “Really?” Had he only ever issued orders? If so, no wonder she’d refused him last night. Perhaps it was time to show her she didn’t have to seduce him to gain control. That he could give up his control freely…to her, at least. “Then let me say it now. Please, Jane, make love to me. If you don’t mind.” She stared at him. “I…I don’t know what you mean.” He nodded to his cock, which looked downright ecstatic over the idea. “Get up on your knees and fit me inside you.” Realizing he’d just issued yet another order, he added, “Please. If you want.” Jane got that sultry look on her face again. Like the little seductress she was rapidly showing herself to be, she rose up and then came down on him. By degrees. Very slow degrees. He had trouble breathing. “Am I hurting you?” Her smile broadened as she shimmied down another inch. “Not really.” Stifling a curse, he clutched her arms. “You just…enjoy torturing me.” “Absolutely,” she said and moved his hands to cover her breasts. He was more than happy to oblige her unspoken request, happy to thumb her nipples and watch as her lovely mouth fell open and a moan of pure pleasure escaped her. His cock swelled, and he thrust up involuntarily. “Please…” he said hoarsely. “Please, Jane…” With a choked laugh, she sheathed herself on him. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh, that feels amazing.” “It would feel more amazing if you…would move,” he rasped, though the mere sensation of being buried inside her was making him insane. When she arched an eyebrow, he added, “Please.” “I could get to like this,” she said teasingly. “The begging.

It occurred to her to drive to Grand Rapids and buy some actual wine. It occurred to her to drive back to the house without buying anything at all. But then where would she be? A weariness set in as she stood and vacillated: a premonition that none of the possible impending outcomes would bring enough relief or pleasure to justify her current heart-racing wretchedness. She saw, in other words, what it meant to have become a deeply unhappy person. And yet the autobiographer now envies and pities the younger Patty standing there in the Fen City Co-op innocently believing that she'd reached the bottom: that, one way or another, the crisis would be resolved in the next five days. A chubby teenage girl at the cash register had taken an interest in her paralysis. Patty gave her a lunatic smile and went and got a plastic-wrapped chicken and five ugly potatoes and some humble, limp leeks. The only thing worse than inhabiting her anxiety undrunk, she decided, would be to be drunk and still inhabiting it.

I already felt naked as it was, and I didn’t want to be touched. He shivered. “She’s got a fiancé,” I told him. “What about you then. Or do you got a husband too?” he asked. Bodies and mind register, but the dick still does the thinking

On July 5 in the late 1980s, a man walked into a convenience store at 6:30 in the morning. Holding his finger in his pocket to simulate a gun, he demanded that the cashier give him the contents of the cash register. Having collected about five dollars in change, the man returned to his car, where he remained until the police arrived. When the police arrived, the young man got out of his car and, with his finger again in his pocket, announced that he had a gun and that everyone should stay away from him. Luckily for him, he was taken into custody without being shot. At the police station, the officer who looked up the man’s record discovered that he had committed six other so-called “armed robberies” over the past fifteen years, all of them at 6:30 in the morning on July 5! Upon learning that the man was a Vietnam veteran, the police surmised that this event was more than mere coincidence.

He got out to go into a bar and have a drink,” Squeaky mumbles. “What an asshole.” “Who did?” “T-Bone. See, T-Bone was, like, the registered owner of this unit. The suitcase. And as soon as he got more than about ten feet away from it—foosh—it self-destructed.

There was little the mainstream auto industry could do to slow Tesla down. But that didn’t stop executives from trying to be difficult whenever possible. Tesla, for example, wanted to call its third-generation car the Model E, so that its lineup of vehicles would be the Model S, E, and X—another playful Musk gag. But Ford’s then CEO, Alan Mulally, blocked Tesla from using Model E, with the threat of a lawsuit. “So I call up Mulally and I was like, ‘Alan, are you just fucking with us or are you really going to do a Model E?’” Musk said. “And I’m not sure which is worse. You know? Like it would actually make more sense if they’re just fucking with us because if they actually come out with a Model E at this point, and we’ve got the Model S and the X and Ford comes out with the Model E, it’s going to look ridiculous. So even though Ford did the Model T a hundred years ago, nobody thinks of ‘Model’ as being a Ford thing anymore. So it would just feel like they stole it. Like why did you go steal Tesla’s E? Like you’re some sort of fascist army marching across the alphabet, some sort of Sesame Street robber. And he was like, ‘No, no, we’re definitely going to use it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea because people are going to be confused because it’s not going to make sense. People aren’t used to Ford having Model something these days. It’s usually called like the Ford Fusion.’ And he was like, no, his guys really want to use that. That’s terrible.” After that, Tesla registered the trademark for Model Y as another joke. “In fact, Ford called us up deadpan and said, ‘We see you’ve registered Model Y. Is that what you’re going to use instead of the Model E?’” Musk said. “I’m like, ‘No, it’s a joke. S-E-X-Y. What does that spell?’ But trademark law is a dry profession it turns out.

Books can be sources of inspiration for anyone, anywhere. In 2011, I went to Madurai to inaugurate the Paediatric Oncology unit of the Meenakshi Mission Hospital. After the programme, a person who looked very familiar approached me. When he came closer, I realized that he has been my driver when I was working with DRDL in Hyderabad. His name is V. Kathiresan, and he worked with me day and night for nine years. During that time, I had noticed that he was always reading in his spare time, be it a book, magazine or a newspaper. That dedication attracted me. One day, I asked him what made him read so much during his leisure time. He replied that he had a son and daughter and both asked him lots of questions. In order to give them correct answers, he read and studied whenever he got the time. The spirit of learning in him impressed me and I told him to study formally through a distance education course. I also gave him some free time to attend the course and complete his +2 and then to apply for higher education. He took that as a challenge and kept on studying. He did B.A. (History), then M.A. (History) and then he did M.A. (Political Science). He also completed his B.Ed and then M.Ed. Then he registered for his Ph.D in Manonmaniam Sundaranar University and got his Ph.D in 2001. He joined the education department of Tamil Nadu government and served for a number of years. In 2011, when I met him, he was an assistant professor in the Government Arts College at Mellur near Madurai. What extraordinary commitment and dedication had helped him to acquire the right skills in his leisure time and changed the course of his life.

It had been often commented upon that Vibe offspring tended to be crazy as bedbugs. ‘Fax’s brother Cragmont had run away with a trapeze girl, then brought her back to New York to get married, the wedding being actually performed on trapezes, groom and best man, dressed in tails and silk opera hats held on with elastic, swinging upside down by their knees in perfect synchrony across the perilous Æther to meet the bride and her father, a carnival “jointee” or concessionaire, in matched excursion from their own side of the ring, bridesmaids observed at every hand up twirling by their chins in billows of spangling, forty feet above the faces of the guests, feathers dyed a deep acid green sweeping and stirring the cigar smoke rising from the crowd. Cragmont Vibe was but thirteen that circus summer he became a husband and began what would become, even for the day, an enormous family. The third brother, Fleetwood, best man at this ceremony, had also got out of the house early, fast-talking his way onto an expedition heading for Africa. He kept as clear of political games as of any real scientific inquiry, preferring to take the title of “Explorer” literally, and do nothing but explore. It did not hurt Fleetwood’s chances that a hefty Vibe trust fund was there to pick up the bills for bespoke pith helmets and meat lozenges and so forth. Kit met him one spring weekend out at the Vibe manor on Long Island. “Say, but you’ve never seen our cottage,” ‘Fax said one day after classes. “What are you doing this weekend? Unless there’s another factory girl or pizza princess or something in the works.” “Do I use that tone of voice about the Seven Sisters material you specialize in?” “I’ve nothing against the newer races,” ‘Fax protested. “But you might like to meet Cousin Dittany anyway.” “The one at Smith.” “Mount Holyoke, actually.” “Can’t wait.” They arrived under a dourly overcast sky. Even in cheerier illumination, the Vibe mansion would have registered as a place best kept clear of—four stories tall, square, unadorned, dark stone facing looking much older than the known date of construction. Despite its aspect of abandonment, an uneasy tenancy was still pursued within, perhaps by some collateral branch of Vibes . . . it was unclear. There was the matter of the second floor. Only the servants were allowed there. It “belonged,” in some way nobody was eager to specify, to previous occupants. “Someone’s living there?” “Someone’s there.” . . . from time to time, a door swinging shut on a glimpse of back stairway, a muffled footfall . . . an ambiguous movement across a distant doorframe . . . a threat of somehow being obliged to perform a daily search through the forbidden level, just at dusk, so detailed that contact with the unseen occupants, in some form, at some unannounced moment, would be inevitable . . . all dustless and tidy, shadows in permanent possession, window-drapes and upholstery in deep hues of green, claret, and indigo, servants who did not speak, who would or could not meet one’s gaze . . . and in the next room, the next instant, waiting . . . “Real nice of you to have me here, folks,” chirped Kit at breakfast. “Fellow sleeps like a top. Well, except . . .” Pause in the orderly gobbling and scarfing. Interest from all around the table. “I mean, who came in the room in the middle of the night like that?” “You’re sure,” said Scarsdale, “it wasn’t just the wind, or the place settling.” “They were walking around, like they were looking for something.” Glances were exchanged, failed to be exchanged, were sent out but not returned. “Kit, you haven’t seen the stables yet,” Cousin Dittany offered at last. “Wouldn’t you like to go riding?

DOCTOR: Mr. Jones, I’ve got your cholesterol levels here. (beat) Okay, you are aware your blood is not moving? GRAVY DRINKER: (nods) DOCTOR: This is kind of a strange question. Um. You haven’t been drinking gravy, have ya? Because based on the test results you’re, like, 90 percent meat by-product. GRAVY DRINKER: (nods) DOCTOR: We’re going to have to register you with the government.

I grabbed Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball from behind the cash register. My thumb went for the red scuff mark on the back of the ball, trying to rub it out like I always did whenever I got bored. Tucker was now preoccupied with lining up a pepper shaker cavalry across from a hostile regiment of saltshaker footmen. ... While Tucker stepped out back for his break, I commandeered his condiment armies. Gus’s cigarette smoke wafted toward the ceiling, pulled into the vent. The oscillating fan on the wall made the papers on the employee bulletin board flutter. Halfway through my recreation of the Battle of the Bulge, I shook Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball to find out if the German saltshaker would be successful in his offensive. Ask again later. Useless thing. If the Allies had taken that advice, the Axis would have won the war.

The problem with a competitive business goes beyond lack of profits. Imagine you’re running one of those restaurants in Mountain View. You’re not that different from dozens of your competitors, so you’ve got to fight hard to survive. If you offer affordable food with low margins, you can probably pay employees only minimum wage. And you’ll need to squeeze out every efficiency: that’s why small restaurants put Grandma to work at the register and make the kids wash dishes in the back. Restaurants aren’t much better even at the very highest rungs, where reviews and ratings like Michelin’s star system enforce

I hadn’t been much help packing for the trip. I was accustomed to America, where I was always within striking distance of a grocery store, gas station, or equipment supply. The Australian bush wasn’t like that. Parts of the Burdekin were dangerously remote, and these, of course, were the parts where we were headed. Steve had to pack his own fuel, water, food, spare tires, boat, engine, and extra parts. He loaded up the Ute. Swags went in, but no tent. We would be sleeping under the stars. As we headed out, it came to light that this would be a sixteen-hour trip--and the driving would be shared. “Remember one thing,” Steve said as he climbed over the seat. “If you see a road train coming, you’ve got to get clear off the road.” “Okay,” I agreed. “But I need you to explain what a road train is.” I learned that long-distance truckers in the outback drive huge rigs--double-deckers that are three trailers long. “Okay, great,” I said. “Drive on the left, and watch out for road trains. Got it.” Steve climbed into the back under the canvas canopy and stretched out on top of one of the swags. I wasn’t worried about falling asleep while I was driving. I was too nervous to be sleepy. The farther north I drove, the smaller the roads became. Cars were few and far between. I saw the headlights of an oncoming Ute. Maybe I’ll practice pulling off the road, I thought. I miscalculated the speed of the oncoming vehicle, slowed down more abruptly than I intended, and pulled completely onto the soft gravel shoulder. The draft of the passing truck hit our Ute like a sonic boom--it was a giant beast with a huge welded bull bar on its front and triple trailers behind. The road train flew past us doing every bit of seventy-five miles per hour, never slowing down. I realized that if I hadn’t pulled over, I would have probably been knocked off the face of the earth. I imagined a small paragraph buried deep inside the Eugene Register-Guard, my hometown newspaper: “Oregon Woman Bites the Dust.” Road trains owned the road, but I had passed my first test. I could do this! I should not have spoken so soon.

It got to the point where he didn’t even look up at the sky any more as he blundered back and forth. The human mind had evolved for just one universe, he thought. How much of this crap was he supposed to take? He felt exhausted, resentful, bewildered. “Wait.” He paused. He had loped out of the portal onto another stretch of scuffed, anonymous regolith. She was lying in his arms, her weight barely registering. He looked down into her face, and pushed up her gold sun visor. “Emma?” She licked her lips. “Look. Up there.” No Galaxy visible, but a starry sky. The stars looked, well, normal. But he’d learned that meant little. “So what?” Emma was lifting her arm, pointing. He saw three stars, dull white points, in a row. And there was a rough rectangle of stars around them—one of them a distinctive red—and what looked like a Galaxy disc, or maybe just a nebula, beneath … “Holy shit,” he said. She whispered, “There must be lots of universes like ours. But, surely to God, there is only one Orion.” And then light, dazzling, unbearably brilliant, came stabbing over the close horizon. It was a sunrise. He could actually feel its heat through the layers of his suit. He looked down at the ground at his feet. The rising light cast strong shadows, sharply illuminating the miniature crevices and craters there. And here was a “crater” that was elongated, and neatly ribbed. It was a footprint. He stepped forward, lifted his foot, and set it down in the print. It fit neatly. When he lifted his foot away the cleats of his boot hadn’t so much as disturbed a regolith grain. It was his own footprint. Good grief. After hundreds of universes of silence and remoteness and darkness, universes of dim light and shadows, he was right back where he started.

As a practical matter, it is far more difficult to traffic in SNAP than it once was. Back in the days when folks got paper food stamp coupons rather than electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, they could easily trade the coupons for cash. But today’s SNAP card has your name on it and requires you to enter a personal identification number, or PIN, when you swipe your card at the register, meaning that in most cases you would want to be physically present at a fraudulent transaction. If you were to simply give someone your EBT card and PIN so that he could buy food for himself and then give you cash back, what’s to keep the person from using up all your benefits? Do you really want to trust someone with one of your most valuable assets, especially when you already know he is not above breaking the law? In

Well gee, this thing sure is convenient. You gotta make sure to always have it on you—you can’t connect to the other person if they’ve got it turned off—and you gotta manually input phone numbers to register them.

The government could give everyone a basic income, make sure they’ve got a roof over their head and food in their bellies. But it suits them to keep us at the bottom of the heap. Not registered to vote, so we don’t get a say; not paying taxes, so why should we get a say? It’s all about keeping us in our place. Second-class citizens.

Laying my head back, I got comfortable and started to read. I was five chapters in before I realized it, and when that fact registered I took a second to be grateful for books. They were a magic that could not be replicated, even when I was actually in a fantasy world. The escape they offered, it was priceless. It had saved me so many times, and I knew I wasn’t the only one.

Josie got to the final bunker and started pouring in the grain when a putrid odor filled her nose. She covered her face with her hand. Goats had a strong scent, especially the billy goats, but that wasn't what she smelled. It was a distinctive odor. Animals were always dying on the farm. Whether it be a goat, chicken, or a nighttime visitor like a possum or raccoon, animals died, and their stink was unmistakable. Josie knew that she couldn't let the goats feed from bunks that contained a carcass. She was carefully pawing through the three feet of hay that lined the bottom of the bunk in search of the animal when she saw it. The deep indigo of denim. Josie paused. It was so out of place, so foreign a sight, it took a moment for her to register what she was seeing.

There was little the mainstream auto industry could do to slow Tesla down. But that didn't stop executives from trying to be difficult whenever possible. Tesla, for example, wanted to call its third-generation car the Model E, so that its lineup of vehicles would be the Model S, E and X - another playful Musk gag. But Ford's then CEO, Alan Mulally, blocked Tesla from using Model E, with the threat of a lawsuit. "So I call up Mulally and I was like, 'Alan, are you just fucking with us or are you really going to do a Model E?'" Musk said. "And I'm not sure which is worse. You know? Like it would actually make more sense if they're just fucking with us because if they actually come out with a Model E at this point, and we've got the Model S and the X and Ford comes out with a Model E, it's going to look ridiculous. So even though Ford did the Model T a hundred years ago, nobody thinks of 'Model' as being a Ford thing anymore. So it would just feel like they stole it. Like why did you going stealing Tesla's E? Like you're some sort of fascist army marching across the alphabet, some sort of Sesame Street robber. And he was like, 'No, no, we're definitely going to use it.' And I was like, 'Oh, I don't think that's such a good idea because people are going to be confused because it's not gong to make sense. People aren't used to Ford having Model something these days. It's usually called like the Ford Fusion.' And he was like, no, his guys really want to use that. That's terrible." After that, Tesla registered the trademark for Model Y as another joke. "In fact, Ford called us up deadpan and said, 'We see you've registered Model Y. Is that what you're gong to use instead of the Model E?'" Musk said. "I'm like, 'No, it's a joke. S-E-X-Y. What does that spell?' But trademark law is a dry profession it turns out.

Y'all know that little gal Kelly Crawford that works down at Tuckers?" Tuckers Jiffy Lube was the only gas station and mechanical shop in town. Jena Lynn's face contorted in disapproval. "You referring to that scantily clad girl who runs the register?" I asked as Jena Lynn hopped up to retrieve the coffeepot. "That's the one." Betsy curled up her lip in disgust. "That girl is barely legal!" I was outraged. "I know! I'm going to tell her granny. She'll take a hickory switch to the girl when she finds out what she's been up to. She was all over Darnell." Betsy wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She was right about that. Her granny wasn't the type to spare the rod; she parented old-school style. Jena Lynn's tone rose as she stirred raw sugar into her coffee. "You caught them?" "Well, I called him after what happened with poor Mr. Ledbetter---" We shook our heads. "---told him I was going to be late 'cause I was taking that extra shift. Guess he thought late meant real late 'cause when I got home, they we're rootin' around on my couch, the one my meemaw gave me last spring when she had her house redecorated." We sat in stunned silence. "I threw his junk out last night. And when he still didn't budge from the TV"---she paused for effect---"I set it all on fire, right there in the front yard." She leaned back and crossed her arms over her expansive chest. "That's harsh." Sam stacked his empty plates. "Maybe it wasn't Darnell's fault." Jena Lynn and I gave him a disapproving glare. He appeared oblivious to his offense, and the moron had the audacity to reach into the container for a cream cheese Danish. "Sam, if you value that scrawny hand of yours, I'd pull it out real slow or you'll be drawing back a nub," Betsy warned. "Sheesh!" Sam jerked backward. It was obvious he didn't doubt her for a second. He marched toward the kitchen and dropped the plates in the bus tub with a loud thud. "He should know better. You don't touch a gal's comfort food in a time of crisis," I said, and my sister nodded in agreement. Jena Lynn patted Betsy on the arm. "Ignore him, Bets. He's a man." I stood. "And if I may be so bold as to speak for all the women of the world who have been unfortunate enough to be in your shoes, we applaud you." A satisfied smile spread across Betsy's lips. "Thank you." She took a little bow. "That's why my eyes look like they do. Smoke got to me." She leaned in closer. "I threw all his high school football trophies into the blaze while he was hollering at me. The whole neighborhood came out to watch." I chuckled. The thought of Darnell Fryer running around watching all his belongings go up in smoke was hilarious. I wished I'd been there. "Did anyone try to step in and help Darnell?" "Hell nah. He owes his buddies so much money from borrowing to pay his gambling debts, the ones that came out brought their camping chairs and watched the show while tossing back a few cold ones." She got up from the counter to scoop a glass full of ice and filled it with Diet Coke from the fountain. "Y'all, I gotta lose this weight now I'm back on the market." Betsy was one of a kind.

I woke up every morning at six to study—because it was easier to focus in the mornings, before I was worn out from scrapping. Although I was still fearful of God’s wrath, I reasoned with myself that my passing the ACT was so unlikely, it would take an act of God. And if God acted, then surely my going to school was His will. The ACT was composed of four sections: math, English, science and reading. My math skills were improving but they were not strong. While I could answer most of the questions on the practice exam, I was slow, needing double or triple the allotted time. I lacked even a basic knowledge of grammar, though I was learning, beginning with nouns and moving on to prepositions and gerunds. Science was a mystery, perhaps because the only science book I’d ever read had had detachable pages for coloring. Of the four sections, reading was the only one about which I felt confident. BYU was a competitive school. I’d need a high score—a twenty-seven at least, which meant the top fifteen percent of my cohort. I was sixteen, had never taken an exam, and had only recently undertaken anything like a systematic education; still I registered for the test. It felt like throwing dice, like the roll was out of my hands. God would score the toss. I didn’t sleep the night before. My brain conjured so many scenes of disaster, it burned as if with a fever. At five I got out of bed, ate breakfast, and drove the forty miles to Utah State University. I was led into a white classroom with thirty other students, who took their seats and placed their pencils on their desks. A middle-aged woman handed out tests and strange pink sheets I’d never seen before. “Excuse me,” I said when she gave me mine. “What is this?” “It’s a bubble sheet. To mark your answers.” “How does it work?” I said. “It’s the same as any other bubble sheet.” She began to move away from me, visibly irritated, as if I were playing a prank. “I’ve never used one before.” She appraised me for a moment. “Fill in the bubble of the correct answer,” she said. “Blacken it completely. Understand?” The test began. I’d never sat at a desk for four hours in a room full of people. The noise was unbelievable, yet I seemed to be the only person who heard it, who couldn’t divert her attention from the rustle of turning pages and the scratch of pencils on paper. When it was over I suspected that I’d failed the math, and I was positive that I’d failed the science. My answers for the science portion couldn’t even be called guesses. They were random, just patterns of dots on that strange pink sheet. I drove home. I felt stupid, but more than stupid I felt ridiculous. Now that I’d seen the other students—watched them march into the classroom in neat rows, claim their seats and calmly fill in their answers, as if they were performing a practiced routine—it seemed absurd that I had thought I could score in the top fifteen percent. That was their world. I stepped into overalls and returned to mine.

train me, nice as could be other than acting like she’s my mom, all honey-this and honey-that and “You think you can remember all that, sweetie?” Just three or four years out of high school herself. But she did have three kids, so probably she’d wiped so many asses she got stuck that way. I didn’t hold it against her. Coach Briggs’s brother stayed upstairs in the office. Heart attack guy was a mystery. First they said he might come back by the end of summer. Then they all stopped talking about him. As far as customers, every kind of person came in. Older guys would want to chew the fat outside in the dock after I loaded their grain bags or headgates or what have you. I handled all the larger items. They complained about the weather or tobacco prices, but oftentimes somebody would recognize me and want to talk football. What was my opinion on our being a passing versus running team, etc. So that was amazing. Being known. It was the voice that hit my ear like a bell, the day he came in. I knew it instantly. And that laugh. It always made you wish that whoever made him laugh like that, it had been you. I was stocking inventory in the home goods aisle, and moved around the end to where I could see across the store. Over by the medications and vaccines that were kept in a refrigerator case, he was standing with his back to me, but that wild head of hair was the giveaway. And the lit-up face of Donnamarie, flirting so hard her bangs were standing on end. She was opening a case for him. Some of the pricier items were kept under lock and key. I debated whether to go over, but heard him say he needed fifty pounds of Hi-Mag mineral and a hundred pounds of pelleted beef feed, so I knew I would see him outside. I signaled to Donnamarie that I’d heard, and threw it all on the dolly to wheel out to the loading dock. He pulled his truck around but didn’t really see me. Just leaned his elbow out the open window and handed me the register ticket. He’d kept the Lariat of course, because who wouldn’t. “You’ve still got the Fastmobile, I see,” I said. He froze in the middle of lighting a smoke, shifted his eyes at me, and shook his head fast, like a splash of cold water had hit him. “I’ll be goddamned. Diamond?” “The one,” I said. “How you been hanging, Fast Man?” “Cannot complain,” he said. But it seemed like he wasn’t a hundred percent on it really being me loading his pickup. He watched me in the side mirror. The truck bounced a little each time I hefted a mineral block or bag into the bed. Awesome leaf springs on that beauty. I came around to give him back his ticket, and he seemed more sure.

To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity. Imagine you’re at a grocery store, and you watch an elderly lady scream at the cashier, berating him for not accepting her thirty-cent coupon. Why does this lady give a fuck? It’s just thirty cents. I’ll tell you why: That lady probably doesn’t have anything better to do with her days than to sit at home cutting out coupons. She’s old and lonely. Her kids are dickheads and never visit. She hasn’t had sex in over thirty years. She can’t fart without extreme lower-back pain. Her pension is on its last legs, and she’s probably going to die in a diaper thinking she’s in Candy Land. So she snips coupons. That’s all she’s got. It’s her and her damn coupons. It’s all she can give a fuck about because there is nothing else to give a fuck about. And so when that pimply-faced seventeen-year-old cashier refuses to accept one of them, when he defends his cash register’s purity the way knights used to defend maidens’ virginity, you can bet Granny is going to erupt. Eighty years of fucks will rain down all at once, like a fiery hailstorm of “Back in my day” and “People used to show more respect” stories. The problem with people who hand out fucks like ice cream at a goddamn summer camp is that they don’t have anything more fuck-worthy to dedicate their fucks to.

But instead, my father sat us down for an explanation of lesbianism.... ...I was mortified, and looked over at my girlfriend to see if this was all registering with her, but she was too busy daydreaming to notice the runaway train that was thundering thought the motel room. She hadn't spoken a single word to any of the adults so far on the trip, and even when she occasionally spoke to me, it was in such a eerily quiet tone that only a nine-year-old- girl or a dog could hear it. I'm pretty sure that Bob and Donna thought she was a deaf-mute, albeit one who could miraculously sense the vacuum seal breaking on a can of Pringles from a mile away. I was eager to let the whole thing go, when my friend asked casually, 'But what's munching the carpet got to do with anything?

Hey, Willa?” “Hey, Luke,” I reply dryly, since the be quiet part obviously didn’t register. “Sometimes I wish you were my mom.” I blink at the boy, too stunned to speak, so he continues. “At that birthday party? Where I got held under the water? He told me that even my mom didn’t like me.

You’ve been with me this whole time? Through everything?” He nodded. He put his hand to her stomach and gazed into her eyes. “Everything.” Avery looked away, his dad’s comment registering. He dropped Mrs. Wells hand. “I’ll leave you guys alone for awhile.” He got up and went into the hall, closing the door behind him. He leaned against it, listening in on their one-sided conversation. “Yours, Mike,” she said. “Of course I’m going to keep it!” She paused. “I know. Paul and Becky will be devastated, not to mention the kids.” There was silence and then laughing.

THE EXCITEMENT IN the boardroom was only overshadowed by the anticipation. They didn’t have long to wait. Sam yelled for everyone to get down. Jack pushed her from behind and shoved her to the floor, covering her with his body. Shots rang out. Someone cried out in pain. Jack cursed, snapping her out of her haze. She tried to look up, but Jack kept her head down. Two more shots rang out before everything went eerily quiet. “Jenna, are you okay?” Sam called to her from the doorway. “Fine,” she answered automatically, unsure about anything at the moment. “Everyone else okay?” Sam asked. All the men indicated they were fine, but she didn’t hear Jack among them. Jack eased his weight off her and slid aside. Cameron helped her to her feet and the two bodyguards flanking her made room for her to pass. Jack leaned against the wall, blood running down his left arm, a gun in his right. She flung herself against his chest and held on to him, unable to look through the doorway where the first shots originated. Sam was excellent at his job. In his background check on David, he’d discovered David’s gun permit. Using some of his less-than-reputable contacts from the FBI, they’d had someone break into David’s house and office to locate the weapon. David actually owned quite a few guns, only one registered, which he kept in his office, locked in his desk drawer. They assumed David would be in a rage before he left the boardroom, and his rage would make him pick up the gun and come after Jenna. Provoking him was risky, but it was also the only way to end David’s terrorism. Knowing David would be volatile, she and Sam had sat in the office at the ranch planning what they’d do to prevent the inevitable. They figured David would probably try to get to her before she got back on the plane. She never thought David would come after her before she’d even left the boardroom. “What the hell were you thinking? You weren’t supposed to have a gun. I’m going to kill Sam,” she said and grabbed his lapels and shook him. “Later, give me a kiss.” She pressed her lips to his. Warm, alive, she thanked God he was alive. She helped him off with his suit jacket, revealing the deep furrow on the outside of his arm. “Looks like this time you get the stitches. Maybe if you need a pokey shot, Lily will give you a lollipop.” She gave him her most sugary sweet smile, even though they both knew she wasn’t happy about the situation. A tear slid down her cheek. “I could have lost you.” “Now you know exactly how I felt when he took you.” The relief overcame her fear. She pressed her forehead to his and took a moment to savor the closeness and the fact that they were both alive. She took a calming breath before addressing Sam. “Is David dead?” “Yes, just outside the door. Jack got him.” “I told you I’d kill that bastard.” -Sam, Jenna, & Jack

One particular incident had seared itself into Wences’s memory. In 1984, during the first major episode of hyperinflation after the Argentinian military junta lost power, Wences’s mother came to get him and his two sisters from school. His mom was carrying two grocery bags filled with money—the salary she had just been given in cash. She rushed with Wences and his sisters to the grocery store and had them run through the aisles, grabbing as much food as possible before the hyperinflation caused the goods to be repriced. A man walked through the aisles all day doing nothing but repricing the items on the shelves to keep up with the rapidly changing value of the peso. When Wences and his mother got to the register, he and his sisters would run back and grab more food if they still had any money left. Holding on to money was equal to losing it. These experiences gave Wences insights into the nature of money that most people in the world learn only from textbooks. In America, the dollar seamlessly serves the three functions of money: providing a medium of exchange, a unit for measuring the cost of goods, and an asset where value can be stored. In Argentina, on the other hand, while the peso was used as a medium of exchange—for daily purchases—no one used it as a store of value. Keeping savings in the peso was equivalent to throwing away money. So people exchanged any pesos they wanted to save for dollars, which kept their value better than the peso. Because the peso was so volatile, people usually remembered prices in dollars, which provided a more reliable unit of measure over time.

Then it came to him. This was not the diversion, the battle of Gibeah was the diversion. The real goal was to capture Mikael himself, the prince of Israel. Well, he thought, they picked the wrong archangel to mess with. I have a chosen nation to protect. He pulled out his horn to call for help, but Ba’alzebul’s mace smashed it out of his hands. Dagon assaulted him with a barrage of sword slashes and strikes. Mikael kept him at bay, but almost got stung by Asherah’s javelin from the other side. He dodged and kept moving. His Karabu training was his only hope. It was the heavenly battle technique of Yahweh’s archangels developed to protect the Garden of Eden in primordial days. They had taught the human giant killers Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Caleb the Way of Karabu, but now he would need to call upon his training to survive this ordeal. He flipped, spun, and danced around the four attacking gods and their weapons. It frustrated the malevolent beings, which was to Mikael’s advantage. But archangels were still created beings. He began to grow tired. They were wearing him down. Dagon’s sword grazed Mikael’s arm, cutting through his tunic. He was not going to be able to keep it up. He would have to do something drastic. Ba’alzebul moved in on Mikael. The biggest, meanest, mightiest of the gods had been waiting for his opportune moment when Mikael was just weary enough, just worn enough, to be incapable of expecting the unexpected. Ba’alzebul took the lead and pounded Mikael’s sword with his mace and backed him up against the ledge. Mikael looked down to the chasm floor. Saul and his forces made their way through the chasm below after slaughtering the priests of Molech. It wasn’t a fair fight. And neither was this fight. But Saul was safe. He had made it through and went north toward Gibeah. But the gods were not here for Saul. They were here for Mikael. Ba’alzebul suddenly threw down his mace and rushed Mikael like a bull goring its prey. Mikael didn’t register why, until Ba’alzebul hit him. The two of them launched off into space, plummeting toward the chasm floor two hundred feet below. Angels and gods could not die. But they were not mere spirits. They were enfleshed spirits. While it was unique flesh that would heal miraculously, it was still flesh that could be hurt — as Ba’alzebul knew all too well from his own painful experience in the molten earth. They hit the ground with a powerful thud and sank several feet into the dirt. Every bone in Mikael’s body was broken in the fall. He was paralyzed in excruciating pain. Ba’alzebul had been on top of Mikael, so while he too would be somewhat incapacitated, it would not be as bad for him, having used Mikael’s body as a cushion in the fall. As Mikael slipped into a state of delirious pain, he knew that their goal had been to capture him this way. To ambush him and therefore make both Saul and David more vulnerable to human attack. But what did they plan for Mikael? He could not begin to imagine.

At the Saleve, the stove is drawing badly. This and the stale tobacco, rough wine and a perpetual acrid pungency (disinfectant or vomit, or both) are almost intolerable. But there’s that tingling you’ve only got to register once: within two seconds it gets you at the back of your throat, and then immediately diffuses like a drop of oil. A sudden and surprising sweetness. Breathe in through your mouth, out through your nose. That’s it. You’re hooked. Someone here is smoking hashish.

The Warburg family is the most important ally of the Rothschilds, and the history of this family is at least equally interesting. The book The Warburgs shows that the bloodline of this family dates back to the year 1001.[28] Whilst fleeing from the Muslims, they established themselves in Spain. There they were pursued by Fernando of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and moved to Lombardy. According to the annals of the city of Warburg, in 1559, Simon von Cassel was entitled to establish himself in this city in Westphalia, and he changed his surname to Warburg. The city register proves that he was a banker and a trader. The real banking tradition was beginning to take shape when three generations later Jacob Samuel Warburg immigrated to Altona in 1668. His grandson Markus Gumprich Warburg moved to Hamburg in 1774, where his two sons founded the well-known bank Warburg & Co. in 1798. With the passage of time, this bank did business throughout the entire world. By 1814, Warburg & Co had business relations with the Rothschilds in London. According to Joseph Wechsberg in his book The Merchant Bankers, the Warburgs regarded themselves equal to the Rothschild, Oppenheimer and Mendelsohn families.[29] These families regularly met in Paris, London and Berlin. It was an unwritten rule that these families let their descendants marry amongst themselves. The Warburgs married, just like the Rothschilds, within houses (bloodlines). That’s how this family got themselves involved with the prosperous banking family Gunzberg from St. Petersburg, with the Rosenbergs from Kiev, with the Oppenheims and Goldschmidts from Germany, with the Oppenheimers from South Africa and with the Schiffs from the United States.[30] The best-known Warburgs were Max Warburg (1867-1946), Paul Warburg (1868-1932) and Felix Warburg (1871-1937). Max Warburg served his apprenticeship with the Rothschilds in London, where he asserted himself as an expert in the field of international finances. Furthermore, he occupied himself intensively with politics and, since 1903, regularly met with the German minister of finance. Max Warburg advised, at the request of monarch Bernhard von Bülow, the German emperor on financial affairs. Additionally, he was head of the secret service. Five days after the armistice of November 11, 1918 he was delegated by the German government as a peace negotiator at a peace committee in Versailles. Max Warburg was also one of the directors of the Deutsche Reichsbank and had financial importances in the war between Japan and Russia and in the Moroccan crisis of 1911. Felix Warburg was familiarized with the diamond trade by his uncle, the well-known banker Oppenheim. He married Frieda Schiff and settled in New York. By marrying Schiff’s daughter he became partner at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Paul Warburg became acquainted with the youngest daughter of banker Salomon Loeb, Nina. It didn’t take long before they married. Paul Warburg left Germany and also became a partner with Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. During the First World War he was a member of the Federal Reserve Board, and in that position he had a controlling influence on the development of American financial policies. As a financial expert, he was often consulted by the government. The Warburgs invested millions of dollars in various projects which all served one purpose: one absolute world government. That’s how the war of Japan against Russia (1904-1905) was financed by the Warburgs bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co.[31] The purpose of this war was destroying the csardom. As said before, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, James P. Warburg said: “We shall have a world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government

Paw, paw, paw. On his shirt. “Fucking hell.” He gave in and rubbed that black belly. “And no, I don’t need anything.” The purring got so loud, he had to lean in to the butler. “What did you say?” “I’m happy to oblige whatever you require.” “Yeah. I know. But I’m going to take care of my brother. No one else. Are we clear.” The cat was now rubbing its head into his pec. Then stretching up into the itching. Oh, God, this was awful—especially as the butler’s already droopy face sagged down to what were no doubt knobby knees. “Ah, shit, Fritz—” “Is he ill?” iAm closed his eyes briefly as the female voice registered. Fantastic. Another party heard from. “He’s fine,” iAm said without looking at the Chosen Selena. Leaving the kibitzers in the dust, he went into the pantry with the freeloading cat and . . . Right. How was he going to get the load of post-migraine recovery rations down from the shelves with his arms full of— What was its name? Fine. It was G*dd*mn Cat, then. Looking down into those wide, contented eyes, iAm thinned his lips as he rubbed under its chin. Behind an ear. “Okay, enough with this.” He played with one of the paws. “I gotta put you down now.” Assuming control, he took the cat out of its recline and went to put it down on the— Somehow the thing managed to claw its way into the very fibers of his fleece and hang off the front of him like a tie. “Are you kidding me.” More purring. A blink of those luminous eyes. An expression of self-possession that iAm took to mean this interaction was going to go the cat’s way—and no one else’s. “Mayhap I shall help?” Selena asked softly. iAm bit out a curse and glared at the cat. Then at the Chosen. But short of taking off his pullover? G*dd*mn Cat was sticking with him. “I need some of those Milanos up there?” The Chosen reached up and took a bag from the Pepperidge Farm munchie department. “And he’s going to need some of those tortilla chips.” “Plain or the lime flavor?” “Plain.” iAm gave up the ghost and resumed servicing G*dd*mn—and the cat immediately went into full La-Z-Boy again. “He’s going to want one of the Entenmann’s pound cakes. And we’re going to bring him three ice-cold Cokes, two big Poland Springs, room temperature, and a partridge in a pear tree.” -Boo, iAm, Fritz, & Selena

But don’t you think we should at least have a practice kiss first?” Almost against her will, her gaze focused on his mouth. Yes. Yes, they should. “If Gram asked, I was going to tell her you have a thing about public displays of affection.” “This isn’t public. This is your--our--home.” “Public as in with an audience.” She needed to look away from his mouth, especially since it was getting closer, but she couldn’t. When his face got close enough so she registered his intent, she raised her gaze to his, but it was too late. Before she could react, his lips met hers, his hand still on her back to hold her close, and she closed her eyes. Practice. That’s all it was. And if her body started tingling and her fingers itched to run through his hair and her body wanted to melt against his…well, that just boded well for a month of pretending they were into each other, didn’t it?

I woke to sounds coming from Bella’s bedroom. After the shocking revelations the night before and the lack of sleep, it didn’t register that it could be Ty. I entered the doorway and froze as I saw him bent over the changing table, singing to Bella, while changing her diaper. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…you make me happy, when skies are gray….. I folded my arms across my chest and smiled from cheek to cheek. It was the cutest thing I had ever seen.“Again, I have to ask…who are you and what have you done with my cousin?” He picked up Bella and turned to face me. His grin was huge. Bella grabbed a chunk of his shabby hair and got his attention. “Ouch, gentle Iz!