Jacket For Men Quotes

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets; I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.

Strange how close the darkness is, even when things seem brightest. Even in the glare of a summer noon, when the sidewalk bakes and iron fences are hot to the touch, the shadows are still with us. They congregate in doorways and porches, and under bridges, and beneath the brims of gentlemen’s hats so you cannot see their eyes. There is darkness in our mouths and ears; in our bags and wallets; within the swing of men’s jackets and beneath the flare of women’s skirts. We carry it around with us, the dark, and its influence stains us deep.

She turned to Skulduggery and held out her arms. “Come here, you.” He tilted his head. “My hugs are for special occasions only.” “Hug me.” “I prefer the old tradition.” “Hug.” “Would a handshake do?” “Hug.” “A pat on the back?” She stepped forward and wrapped her arms round him. “Hug,” she said. He sighed, and his hands settled on her shoulders. The others were warm and their embraces strong – with Skulduggery the hug was cold, and there were areas on his jacket that gave way beneath her fingers, and she could feel the emptiness within. She didn’t mind.

Beyond them stood a far greater number of men, all dressed like human versions of classic tin soldiers; dark blue jackets, white shirts, red sashes and black top hats. Definitely not 21st century military uniform; I’d have thought that they were actors had they not, on a drum roll, unshouldered their rifles and fired into the air.

Betrayal wears a lot of different hats. You don’t have to make a show of it like Brutus did, you don’t have to leave anything visible jutting from the base of your best friend’s spine, and afterward you can stand there straining your ears for hours, but you won’t hear a cock crow either. No, the most insidious betrayals are done merely by leaving the life jacket hanging in your closet while you lie to yourself that it’s probably not the drowning man’s size. That’s how we slide, and while we slide we blame the world’s problems on colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, corporatism, stupid white men, and America, but there’s no need to make a brand name of blame. Individual self-interest: that’s the source of our descent, and it doesn’t start in the boardrooms or the war rooms either. It starts in the home.

Pantaloons were often worn tight as paint and were not a great deal less revealing, particularly as they were worn without underwear. . . . Jackets were tailored with tails in the back, but were cut away in front so that they perfectly framed the groin. It was the first time in history that men's apparel was consciously designed to be more sexy than women's.

What is it about men in dinner jackets?! Black tie makes even the most geeky bloke look gorgeous, and as for the already good-looking ones - well, it sends them into sex appeal overdrive, and they know it.

I believe in the absolute and unlimited liberty of reading. I believe in wandering through the stacks and picking out the first thing that strikes me. I believe in choosing books based on the dust jacket. I believe in reading books because others dislike them or find them dangerous. I believe in choosing the hardest book imaginable. I believe in reading up on what others have to say about this difficult book and then making up my own mind. - Rick Moody

Look at your daughter,' she whispered. 'As brave as...as.." She wanted to compare Meggie to a hero in some story but all the heroes she could think of were men, and anyway none of them seemed to her brave enough for comparison to the girl standing there, perfectly straight, scrutinizing Capricorn's Black Jackets, with her chin jutting out defiantly.

To think the temperature in a building is sexist is absurd.” But it’s not absurd. What’s absurd is reducing workplace productivity by using precious fossil fuels to excessively cool an office building so that men wearing ornamental jackets will feel more comfortable.

Four young men in motorcycle jackets... set upon the man in khaki shorts and beat him unconscious with his own sandwich board.

The small men and women with the upslanted eyes looked at his caked forehead and bloody jacket sleeve with unsettling Oriental blandness.

I caught sight of the wicked skull and flaming wings across his leather jacket and knew without a flicker of a doubt, that I’d never been meant for anything or anyone else.

It’s going to work.” “Classic,” Roarke said. “What’s going to work? What’s classic? I want my jacket.” “Forget it. You’re going to walk right up to Milo the Mole’s front door, and he’s going to answer.” “I am? He is?” “Damsel in distress, right?” Eve said to Roarke. “A very alluring damsel. Clever, Lieutenant.” “Oh, okay. I get it. I look like I’m in trouble—all alone, unarmed. Harmless. Girl. He opens up to find out what’s what. You should do it,” Peabody told Eve. “You’re the one with the tits. Men are stupid for tits.” “Harsh,” Roarke observed. “But largely true.” “Plus, you’re the type, obviously, who appeals to skinny geeks.” “Oh yeah,” McNab confirmed. “Completely.

These are not men of great imagination, but one can hardly blame them for not being prepared for this particular contingency, the sight of a tweet-jacketed, tenured, middle-aged, senior professor and department chair in a fake nose and glasses, brandishing a live, terrified goose... (Richard Russo, Straight Man)

In Paris, I felt connected to history in a way I did not in America. Elderly men I passed in the Latin Quarter, with empty sleeves pinned to the shoulder of their jackets, reminded me of the not-so-distant war.

Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank, and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back, with interest. We are Indians, and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them, with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank. — Maquinna Nootka Chief

All this time, and I could just leave. I could have left months ago. For nearly two years, I had been seduced by the confidence of young men. They made it look so simple, knowing what you wanted and getting it. I had been ready to believe in them, eager to organize my life around their principles. I had trusted them to tell me who I was, what mattered, how to live. I had trusted them to have a plan, and trusted that it was the best plan for me. I thought they knew something I did not know. I swam in relief. Watching the city, wrapped in Ian’s jacket, I did not see that I was in good company: an entire culture had been seduced. I understood my blind faith in ambitious, aggressive, arrogant young men from America’s soft suburbs as a personal pathology, but it wasn’t personal at all. It had become a global affliction.

The men digging in on both sides of me cursed the stench and the mud. I began moving the heavy, sticky clay mud with my entrenching shovel to shape out the extent of the foxhole before digging deeper. Each shovelful had to be knocked off the spade, because it stuck like glue. I was thoroughly exhausted and thought my strength wouldn’t last from one sticky shovelful to the next. Kneeling on the mud, I had dug the hole no more than six or eight inches deep when the odor of rotting flesh got worse. There was nothing to do but continue to dig, so I closed up my mouth and inhaled with short shallow breaths. Another spadeful of soil out of the hole released a mass of wriggling maggots that came welling up as though those beneath were pushing them out. I cursed and told the NCO as he came by what a mess I was digging into. ‘You heard him, he said put the holes five yards apart.’ In disgust, I drove the spade into the soil, scooped out the insects, and threw them down the front of the ridge. The next stroke of the spade unearthed buttons and scraps of cloth from a Japanese army jacket in the mud—and another mass of maggots. I kept on doggedly. With the next thrust, metal hit the breastbone of a rotting Japanese corpse. I gazed down in horror and disbelief as the metal scraped a clean track through the mud along the dirty whitish bone and cartilage with ribs attached. The shoved skidded into the rotting abdomen with a squishing sound. The odor nearly overwhelmed me as I rocked back on my heels. I began choking and gagging as I yelled in desperation, ‘I can’t dig in here! There’s a dead Nip here!’ The NCO came over, looked down at my problem and at me, and growled, ‘You heard him; he said put the holes five yards apart.

The warm September sun brought up the aroma of frosty crops and damp earth. It wrapped around the men standing in groups, making them sweat underneath their good wool jackets and igniting the sharp stink of overheated and excited people. Everyone had been preparing for weeks, and they’d all travelled miles to be there, on the edge of the small village. The harvest was mostly finished, and a collective sense of tired gratification lay beneath the day’s nervous energy.

We women think men are obsessed with sex, and we’re so wrong. Men care about being comfortable. Old jackets, old habits, old ways, old sweethearts, they want all that. They hate change, it gets them unsettled, and they get enough of that when they face challenges at work. They want to come home and regenerate in the cocoon of being Mama’s pet. It is not surprising that men don’t understand the need for growing up. They don’t realize that setting boundaries with parents is the most important thing we need to do in our lives.

I want to design sleeveless jackets for armless men. I'm still trying to work out how they would zip it up though.

Riku, was harassed by scavengers wanting to buy her best dishes, worth about $200. One by one, she took the dishes out of their velvet jackets and smashed them at the men’s feet.

Her bosom filled the jacket like a pair of boxing gloves stuck inside it.

Congregated around a glass-fronted bookcase was an irritation of middle-aged men in waxed jackets,

Records show the women even made their own restraining jackets.

What's absurd is reducing workplace productivity by using precious fossil fuels to excessively cool an office building so that men wearing ornamental jackets will feel more comfortable.

I hate this place. You can’t get a cup of coffee unless it has a backstory and a pedigree so the café can charge you as much for the cup as a normal human pays for dinner. Women drive by in cute little sports cars with more power under the hood than a Saturn V, but the speedometer will never top twenty because then they might not be seen and admired. Men window-shop in silk jackets made by indentured servants in countries they’ve never heard of while their sons all imagine they’re Tupac because they bought their thousand-dollar designer jeans a couple of sizes too big.

As we strolled into the hospital, I couldn’t help thinking about Maroon 5’s “Harder to Breathe” because I was having a difficult time staying calm. I had been kidnapped and beaten senseless by an agent of Lucifer, and yet the white coats the doctors wore scared me just as badly. The men who had taken me from my mother wore those same damned lab coats. Every time I saw one, it awakened a dormant fear inside me—fear that I’d be dragged away from someone I loved again, fear that I’d be placed into the waiting hands of another horrible person. It would never truly go away. Michael’s shoulder bumped mine, which shook me out of my thoughts. I glanced at him. “What?” “You’re frowning.” “Am I supposed to be smiling right now?” He faced forward, looking at our reflection in the elevator doors. “No, but you look like you’re about to bolt at any second.” I watched the digital numbers change one by one as we rose up to the right floor, fiddling with the rosary in the pocket of my leather jacket. Somehow, the beads had a calming effect on me. “I’m fine.” “Hard ass.” A tiny smirk touched my lips. “Stop thinking about my butt. You’re an archangel.” He grinned, but didn’t reply.

July had come, and haying begun; the little gardens were doing finely and the long summer days were full of pleasant hours. The house stood open from morning till night, and the lads lived out of doors, except at school time. The lessons were short, and there were many holidays, for the Bhaers believed in cultivating healthy bodies by much exercise, and our short summers are best used in out-of-door work. Such a rosy, sunburnt, hearty set as the boys became; such appetites as they had; such sturdy arms and legs, as outgrew jackets and trousers; such laughing and racing all over the place; such antics in house and barn; such adventures in the tramps over hill and dale; and such satisfaction in the hearts of the worthy Bhaers, as they saw their flock prospering in mind and body, I cannot begin to describe.

The two-man crew of the patrol boat does not speak English. Rachel exploits this as best she can, while still dumping life jackets in the water. “What? I don’t understand what you’re saying? Do you speak English?” They confirm in their native tongue that they obviously do not. Rachel must be putting on a theatrical display, because the small boat rocks while she talks. “I don’t need these life jackets anymore,” she says, in her thickest Italian accent. “The colors are all wrong for me. I mean, look at this orange. Ew, right?” Galen rolls his eyes. I try not to giggle. “And this green? Hideous!” she continues. The men get more irate when she doesn’t stop littering their domain. “Hey, what the…Don’t touch me! I have a foot injury, you jerk!” Galen and I slink below the surface. “We knew that might happen,” he says.

Three black men walked past us wearing airline uniforms, visored caps, white pants and jackets whose shoulders bristled with epaulettes. Black pilots? Black captains? It was 1962. In our country, the cradle of democracy, whose anthem boasted ‘the land of the free, the home of the brave,’ the only black men in our airports fueled planes, cleaned cabins, loaded food or were skycaps, racing the pavement for tips.

Sailors are the only class of men who now-a-days see anything like stirring adventure; and many things which to fire-side people appear strange and romantic, to them seem as common-place as a jacket out at elbows.

What are the people like? Do the women wear plaid skirts, cable-knit sweaters? Are the men in hacking jackets? What’s a hacking jacket?” “They’ve grown comfortable with their money,” I said. “They genuinely believe they’re entitled to it. This conviction gives them a kind of rude health. They glow a little.” “I have trouble imagining death at that income level,” she said. “Maybe there is no death as we know it. Just documents changing hands.

He also loved the city itself. Coming to and leaving Cousin Joe’s, he would gorge himself on hot dogs and cafeteria pie, price cigarette lighters and snap-brim hats in store windows, follow the pushboys with their rustling racks of furs and trousers. There were sailors and prizefighters; there were bums, sad and menacing, and ladies in piped jackets with dogs in their handbags. Tommy would feel the sidewalks hum and shudder as the trains rolled past beneath him. He heard men swearing and singing opera. On a sunny day, his peripheral vision would be spangled with light winking off the chrome headlights of taxicabs, the buckles on ladies’ shoes, the badges of policemen, the handles of pushcart lunch-wagons, the bulldog ornaments on the hoods of irate moving vans. This was Gotham City, Empire City, Metropolis. Its skies and rooftops were alive with men in capes and costumes, on the lookout for wrongdoers, saboteurs, and Communists. Tommy

As tight as it had been in the kitchen before they’d left, there were three times as many people crammed in there now, most of them men. Beverly’s mother was nowhere in sight and neither was the baby. Beverly was standing at the sink, a butcher’s knife in her hand. She was slicing oranges from an enormous pile that was sliding across the counter while the two lawyers from the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office, Dick Spencer and Albert Cousins—suit jackets off, ties off, and shirtsleeves rolled up high above the elbow—were twisting the halves of oranges on two metal juicers. Their foreheads were flushed and damp with sweat, their opened collars just beginning to darken, they worked as if the safety of their city relied on the making of orange juice.

The one more or less behind Le Chiffre’s right arm was tall and funereal in his dinner-jacket. His face was wooden and grey, but his eyes flickered and gleamed like a conjurer’s. His whole long body was restless and his hands shifted often on the brass rail. Bond guessed that he would kill without interest or concern for what he killed and that he would prefer strangling. He had something of Lennie in Of Mice and Men, but his inhumanity would not come from infantilism but from drugs. Marihuana, decided Bond.

[...] the most insidious betrayals are done merely by leaving the life jacket hanging in your closet while you lie to yourself that it’s probably not the drowning man’s size. That’s how we slide, and while we slide we blame the world’s problems on colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, corporatism, stupid white men, and America, but there’s no need to make a brand name of blame. Individual self-interest: that’s the source of our descent, and it doesn’t start in the boardrooms or the war rooms either. It starts in the home.

There were plenty of Occidental executives, but enough of them were Japanese to make him feel, at six-feet-two, like a very tall horse’s ass. The small men and women with the upslanted eyes looked at his caked forehead and bloody jacket sleeve with unsettling Oriental blandness.

Grant glanced down at his khaki jacket. Since he’d slipped on the US Navy uniform in Agent Bounter’s office, he’d felt a confident swagger possess him. His spine lengthened, and his shoulders retracted. He should’ve been wearing this every day, not the stupid dress shirt and slacks of a lounge singer.

Tell me!” Cecily insisted later, shaking Colby by both arms. “Cut it out, you’ll dismember me,” Colby said, chuckling. She let go of the artificial arm and wrapped both hands around the good one. “I want to know. Listen, this is my covert operation. You’re just a stand-in!” “I promised I wouldn’t tell.” “You promised in Lakota. Tell me in English what you promised in Lakota.” He gave in. He did tell her, but not Leta, what was said, but only about the men coming to the reservation soon. “We’ll need the license plate number,” she said. “It can be traced. “Oh, of course,” he said facetiously. “They’ll certainly come here with their own license plate on the car so that everyone knows who they are!” “Damn!” He chuckled at her irritation. He was about to tell her about his alternative method when a big sport utility vehicle came flying down the dirt road and pulled up right in front of Leta’s small house. Tate Winthrop got out, wearing jeans and a buckskin jacket and sunglasses. His thick hair fell around his shoulders and down his back like a straight black silk curtain. Cecily stared at it with curious fascination. In all the years she’d known him, she’d very rarely seen his hair down. “All you need is the war paint,” Colby said in a resigned tone. He turned the uninjured cheek toward the newcomer. “Go ahead. I like matching scars.” Tate took off the dark glasses and looked from Cecily to Colby without smiling. “Holden won’t tell me a damned thing. I want answers.” “Come inside, then,” Cecily replied. “We’re attracting enough attention as it is.

I realize belatedly that sending sharks to the aid of humans is a stupid idea. When one of the men tries to kick a tiger shark in the eye-and how could I blame him?-I tell the sharks to retreat. They’ve done all they can do, and I won’t let them be abused for their efforts. After a few more minutes, I see a small, chubby pair of legs struggling nearby. The owner of the legs can’t be older than a toddler. I scoop him up and keep him at the surface. He’s adorable really, with rounded cheeks and a snotty nose and brown eyes with lashes that would make a supermodel jealous. Close to us, a woman who I assume is his mother is crying frantically and calling out to the empty waves around her. I swim him over to her and deliver the little guy into her arms. “He swallowed a good part of the ocean, but otherwise he’ll be fine,” I tell her, knowing that she doesn’t understand. She clutches him to her and trembles. I swim two life jackets over to her and help her strap them on to her and the baby boy. She nods, and despite the language barrier, I can tell that she’s thanking me. Which makes me feel like zoo dirt, since I helped put her and her child in this predicament. If she knew that, she would probably be trying to choke the life from me. And I would probably let her.

You’d better marry her before she reaches eighteen and the spell wears off,” I said. “Spell?” “Yes. The one that’s hiding her fangs and pincers from plain sight.” “I don’t find them especially hidden,” he said mildly. “Then perhaps you’re a pair.” His brows lifted. “Now, that’s the cruelest thing you’ve said so far.” Mrs. Fredericks cleared off, and Chloe took her place before the piano. A beam of sunlight was just beginning its slide into the chamber, capturing her in light. She was a glowing girl with a glowing face, and Joplin at her fingertips. “Give me time,” I muttered, dropping my gaze to my plate. “I’ll come up with something worse.” “No doubt.” Armand pulled a flask from his jacket and shook it in front of my nose. “Whiskey. Conveniently the same color as tea. Are you game, waif?” I glanced around, but no one was looking. I lifted my cup, drained it to the dregs, and set it before him. He was right. It did look like tea. But it tasted like vile burning fire, all the way down my throat. “Sip it,” he hissed, as I began to cough. His voice lifted over my sputtering. “Dear me, Miss Jones, I do beg your pardon. The tea’s rather hot; I should have mentioned it.” “Quite all right,” I gasped, as the whiskey swirled an evil amber in my teacup. Chloe’s song grew bouncier, with lyrics about a girl with strawberries in a wagon. Several of the men had begun to cluster near, drawn to her soprano or perchance her bosom. Two were vying to turn the pages of her music. She had to crane her head to keep Armand in view. He sent her another smile from his chair, lifting his cup in salute. “I’m going to kiss you, Eleanore,” he said quietly, still looking at her. “Not now. Later.” His eyes cut back to mine. “I thought it fair to tell you first.” I stilled. “If you think you can do so without me biting your lip, feel free to try.” His gaze shone wicked blue. “I don’t mind if you bite.” “Biting your lip off, I should have said.” “Ah. Let’s see how it goes, shall we?

Opposite the gates was a low concrete building. Dozens of men were spilling out of its windowless structure and stood in dark clumps on the Pit Road. At first it looked like they were leaving chapel, but as the diesel engine roared nearer, they turned as if they were one. The miners stopped their talking and squinted to get a good look. They all wore the same black donkey jackets and were holding large amber pints and sucking on stubby doubts. The miners had scrubbed faces and pink hands that looked free of work. It seemed wrong, these men being the only clean thing for miles. Reluctantly, the miners parted and let the taxi go by. Leek watched them as they were watching him. His stomach sank. The men all had his mother’s eyes.

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet—if a hero ever has a valet—bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soirées and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes—his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

I draw myself up next to her and look at her profile, making no effort to disguise my attention, here, where there is only Puck to see me. The evening sun loves her throat and her cheekbones. Her hair the color of cliff grass rises and falls over her face in the breeze. Her expression is less ferocious than usual, less guarded. I say, “Are you afraid?” Her eyes are far away on the horizon line, out to the west where the sun has gone but the glow remains. Somewhere out there are my capaill uisce, George Holly’s America, every gallon of water that every ship rides on. Puck doesn’t look away from the orange glow at the end of the world. “Tell me what it’s like. The race.” What it’s like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It’s the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It’s speed, if you’re lucky. It’s life and it’s death or it’s both and there’s nothing like it. Once upon a time, this moment — this last light of evening the day before the race — was the best moment of the year for me. The anticipation of the game to come. But that was when all I had to lose was my life. “There’s no one braver than you on that beach.” Her voice is dismissive. “That doesn’t matter.” “It does. I meant what I said at the festival. This island cares nothing for love but it favors the brave.” Now she looks at me. She’s fierce and red, indestructible and changeable, everything that makes Thisby what it is. She asks, “Do you feel brave?” The mare goddess had told me to make another wish. It feels thin as a thread to me now, that gift of a wish. I remember the years when it felt like a promise. “I don’t know what I feel, Puck.” Puck unfolds her arms just enough to keep her balance as she leans to me, and when we kiss, she closes her eyes. She draws back and looks into my face. I have not moved, and she barely has, but the world feels strange beneath me. “Tell me what to wish for,” I say. “Tell me what to ask the sea for.” “To be happy. Happiness.” I close my eyes. My mind is full of Corr, of the ocean, of Puck Connolly’s lips on mine. “I don’t think such a thing is had on Thisby. And if it is, I don’t know how you would keep it.” The breeze blows across my closed eyelids, scented with brine and rain and winter. I can hear the ocean rocking against the island, a constant lullaby. Puck’s voice is in my ear; her breath warms my neck inside my jacket collar. “You whisper to it. What it needs to hear. Isn’t that what you said?” I tilt my head so that her mouth is on my skin. The kiss is cold where the wind blows across my cheek. Her forehead rests against my hair. I open my eyes, and the sun has gone. I feel as if the ocean is inside me, wild and uncertain. “That’s what I said. What do I need to hear?” Puck whispers, “That tomorrow we’ll rule the Scorpio Races as king and queen of Skarmouth and I’ll save the house and you’ll have your stallion. Dove will eat golden oats for the rest of her days and you will terrorize the races each year and people will come from every island in the world to find out how it is you get horses to listen to you. The piebald will carry Mutt Malvern into the sea and Gabriel will decide to stay on the island. I will have a farm and you will bring me bread for dinner.” I say, “That is what I needed to hear.” “Do you know what to wish for now?” I swallow. I have no wishing-shell to throw into the sea when I say it, but I know that the ocean hears me nonetheless. “To get what I need.

I say, White-Jacket, d'ye mind me? there never was a very great man yet who spent all his life inland. A snuff of the sea, my boy, is inspiration; and having been once out of sight of land, has been the making of many a true poet and the blasting of many pretenders; for, d'ye see, there's no gammon about the ocean; it knocks the false keel right off a pretender's bows; it tells him just what he is, and makes him feel it, too. A sailor's life, I say, is the thing to bring us mortals out. What does the blessed Bible say? Don't it say that we main-top-men alone see the marvellous sights and wonders? Don't deny the blessed Bible, now! don't do it! How it rocks up here, my boy!" holding on to a shroud; "but it only proves what I've been saying—the sea is the place to cradle genius! Heave and fall, old sea!

Across the room, a trio of dark shapes—men’s forms, in trousers and waistcoats and jackets. In the low light, their headless forms seem alive, leaning into one another as they study her. She considers the cut of their clothes, the absence of bone stays or bustled skirts, and thinks, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, how much simpler it would be to be a man, how easily they move through the world, and at such little cost.

Do you want to know my favorite?” My grip tightened on the railing. In. Out. “Andromeda.” Allister moved closer. “An autumn constellation, forty-four light-years away.” His steps were smooth and indifferent, but his voice was dry, as though he found my panic attack positively boring. His attitude brought a small rush of annoyance in, but it was suddenly swayed as my lungs contracted and wouldn’t release. I couldn’t keep a strangled gasp from escaping. “Look up.” It was an order, carrying a harsh edge. With no fight in me, I complied and tilted my head. Tears blurred my vision. Stars swam together and sparkled like diamonds. I was glad they weren’t. Humans would find a way to pluck them from the sky. “Andromeda is the dim, fuzzy star to the right. Find it.” My eyes searched it out. The stars weren’t often easy to see, hidden behind smog and the glow of city lights, but sometimes, on a lucky night like tonight, pollution cleared and they became visible. I found the star and focused on it. “Do you know her story?” he asked, his voice close behind me. A cold wind touched my cheeks, and I inhaled slowly. “Answer me.” “No,” I gritted. “Andromeda was boasted to be one of the most beautiful goddesses.” He moved closer, so close his jacket brushed my bare arm. His hands were in his pockets and his gaze was on the sky. “She was sacrificed for her beauty, tied to a rock by the sea.” I imagined her, a red-haired goddess with a heart of steel chained to a rock. The question bubbled up from the depths of me. “Did she survive?” His gaze fell to me. Down the tear tracks to the blood on my bottom lip. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and he looked away. “She did.” I found the star again. Andromeda. “Ask me what her name means.” It was another rough demand, and I had the urge to refuse. To tell him to stop bossing me around. However, I wanted to know—I suddenly needed to. But he was already walking away, toward the exit. “Wait,” I breathed, turning to him. “What does her name mean?” He opened the door and a sliver of light poured onto the terrace. Black suit. Broad shoulders. Straight lines. His head turned just enough to meet my gaze. Blue. “It means ruler of men.” An icy breeze almost swallowed his words before they reached me, whipping my hair at my cheeks. And then he was gone.

One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.

They were called criminals and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All their meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily up-hill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon on to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.

He works fast," Alan commented as he lifted his wine. "David?" Shelby sent him a puzzled look. "Actually his fastest sped is crawl unless he's got a guitar in his hands." "Really?" Alan's eyes met hers as he sipped, but she didn't understand the amusement in them. "You only stood him up tonight, and already he's planning his wedding to someone else." "Stood him-" she began on a laugh, then remembered. "Oh." Torn between annoyance and her own sense of te ridiculous, Shelby toyed with the stem of her glass. "Men are fickle creatures," she decided. "Apparently." Reaching over, he lifted her chin with a fingertip. "You're holding up well." "I don't like to wear my heart on my sleeve" Exasperated, amused, she muffled a laugh. "Dammit, he would have to pick tonight to show up here." "Of all the gin joints in all the towns..." This time the laugh escaped fully. "Well done," Shelby told him. "I should've thought of that line myself; I heard the movie not long ago." "Heard it?" "Mmm-hmmm. Well..." She lifted her glass in a toast. "To broken hearts?" "Or foolish lies?" Alan countered. Shelby wrinkled her nose as she tapped her glass against his. "I usually tell very good ones. Besides, I did date David.Once.Tree years ago." She finished off her wine. "Maybe four.You can stop grinning in that smug, masculine way any time, Senator." "Was I?" Rising, he offered Shelby her damp jacket. "How rude of me." "It would've been more polite not to acknowledge that you'd caught me in a lie," she commented as they worked their way through the crowd and back into the rain. "Which you wouldn't have done if you hadn't made me so mad that I couldn't think of a handier name to give you in the first place." "If I work my way through the morass of that sentence it seems to be my fault." Alan slipped an arm around her shoulders in so casually friendly a manner she didn't protest. "Suppose I apologize for not giving you time to think of a lie that would hold up?" "It seems fair.

Later he would tell her that their story began at the Royal Hungarian Opera House, the night before he left for Paris on the Western Europe Express. The year was 1937; the month was September, the evening unseasonably cold. His brother had insisted on taking him to the opera as a parting gift. The show was Tosca and their seats were at the top of the house. Not for them the three marble-arched doorways, the façade with its Corinthian columns and heroic entablature. Theirs was a humble side entrance with a red-faced ticket taker, a floor of scuffed wood, walls plastered with crumbling opera posters. Girls in knee-length dresses climbed the stairs arm in arm with young men in threadbare suits; pensioners argued with their white-haired wives as they shuffled up the five narrow flights. At the top, a joyful din: a refreshment salon lined with mirrors and wooden benches, the air hazy with cigarette smoke. A doorway at its far end opened onto the concert hall itself, the great electric-lit cavern of it, with its ceiling fresco of Greek immortals and its gold-scrolled tiers. Andras had never expected to see an opera here, nor would he have if Tibor hadn’t bought the tickets. But it was Tibor’s opinion that residence in Budapest must include at least one evening of Puccini at the Operaház. Now Tibor leaned over the rail to point out Admiral Horthy’s box, empty that night except for an ancient general in a hussar’s jacket. Far below, tuxedoed ushers led men and women to their seats, the men in evening dress, the women’s hair glittering with jewels.

Our people were divided in opinion about these men. Some thought they taught more bad than good. An Indian respects a brave man, but he despises a coward. He loves a straight tongue, but he hates a forked tongue. The French trappers told us some truths and some lies. The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They also brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight, and our people gave them a great feast as a proof that their hearts were friendly. These

I looked to where his tan-and-navy jacket was buttoned securely over his chest. A flush rose to my cheeks before I could stop it. It was ridiculous. It was just skin. I had seen plenty of men without their clothes on. In Clan Ram, men and women sauna-ed together. This would be no different. Of course, he noticed. The uninjured corner of his mouth tilted up, causing the smallest dimple to appear in his cheek. “Don’t worry, Lady Galina. I promise not to seduce you,” he assured me in a voice that was most certainly designed to do just that.

By the time Seth had finished the phone call he was on when he was notified of Grace's arrival, shrugged back into the jacket he'd removed as a concession to the heat and made his way into the bull pen, Carter's desk was completely surrounded. He heard a low,throaty female laugh rise out of the center of the crowd. And saw a half dozen of his best men panting like puppies over a meaty bone. The woman, he decided, was going to be an enormous headache. "I see all cases have been closed this morning, and miraculously crime has come to a halt.

Nila snapped, “Have you forgotten my promise so soon, Mr. Hawk?” The table froze; men looked from the skinny seamstress to their leather-jacketed leader. Cut tensed. “No, I haven’t forgotten.” “I meant what I said,” Nila growled. “I will kill you. You can pretend you’re kind and keep me in good health, but I will never forget what you’ve done.” I stood up, slapping my palms loudly on the table. “Ms. Weaver!” Her head snapped in my direction, her dark eyes blazing. “Was I talking to you? You’re as bad as he is. I have a good mind to kill you, too.

And they shall offer thanks to the earth where all people dwell — To the streams of water, the pools, the springs, and the lakes; to the maize and the fruits — To the medicinal herbs and the trees, to the forest trees for their usefulness, to the animals that serve as food and who offer their pelts as clothing — To the great winds and the lesser winds; to the Thunderers; and the Sun, the mighty warrior; to the moon — To the messengers of the Great Spirit who dwells in the skies above, who gives all things useful to men, who is the source and the ruler of health and life.

Poem for My Father You closed the door. I was on the other side, screaming. It was black in your mind. Blacker than burned-out fire. Blacker than poison. Outside everything looked the same. You looked the same. You walked in your body like a living man. But you were not. would you not speak to me for weeks would you hang your coat in the closet without saying hello would you find a shoe out of place and beat me would you come home late would i lose the key would you find my glasses in the garbage would you put me on your knee would you read the bible to me in your smoking jacket after your mother died would you come home drunk and snore would you beat me on the legs would you carry me up the stairs by my hair so that my feet never touch the bottom would you make everything worse to make everything better i believe in god, the father almighty, the maker of heaven, the maker of my heaven and my hell. would you beat my mother would you beat her till she cries like a rabbit would you beat her in a corner of the kitchen while i am in the bathroom trying to bury my head underwater would you carry her to the bed would you put cotton and alcohol on her swollen head would you make love to her hair would you caress her hair would you rub her breasts with ben gay until she stinks would you sleep in the other room in the bed next to me while she sleeps on the pull-out cot would you come on the sheet while i am sleeping. later i look for the spot would you go to embalming school with the last of my mother's money would i see your picture in the book with all the other black boys you were the handsomest would you make the dead look beautiful would the men at the elks club would the rich ladies at funerals would the ugly drunk winos on the street know ben pretty ben regular ben would your father leave you when you were three with a mother who threw butcher knives at you would he leave you with her screaming red hair would he leave you to be smothered by a pillow she put over your head would he send for you during the summer like a rich uncle would you come in pretty corduroys until you were nine and never heard from him again would you hate him would you hate him every time you dragged hundred pound cartons of soap down the stairs into white ladies' basements would you hate him for fucking the woman who gave birth to you hate him flying by her house in the red truck so that other father threw down his hat in the street and stomped on it angry like we never saw him (bye bye to the will of grandpa bye bye to the family fortune bye bye when he stompled that hat, to the gold watch, embalmer's palace, grandbaby's college) mother crying silently, making floating island sending it up to the old man's ulcer would grandmother's diamonds close their heartsparks in the corner of the closet yellow like the eyes of cockroaches? Old man whose sperm swims in my veins, come back in love, come back in pain.

Then they had a day together in Melbourne and Jenny stayed in her first hotel, with Luc sparing no expense and treating her to the Windsor for the night. Here, Jenny experienced a luxury that had her wide-eyed, where men in their fine uniform of burgundy jackets, trimmed with gold, fussed around them and suggested an afternoon tea like never before. Luc couldn’t help but grin to see his daughter engulfed in a leather chair, near the huge arched picture windows that fronted Spring Street, choosing cucumber sandwiches and beautiful little cakes and pastries from a silver tiered cake stand.

We crossed the street and turned left into one of the side streets, which was only slightly less wide. Here the traffic was lighter. To the left and slightly in front of us, two men walked shoulder to shoulder. The first wore leather pants, a white shirt with wide sleeves, and a leather vest over it. A wide leather bracer enclosed his left forearm. His hair, a rare blond shade, almost gold, hung in a ponytail down his back. He moved with a casual aristocratic elegance, perfectly balanced. Watching him, you had a feeling that if the road suddenly became a tightrope, he would just keep on walking without breaking a stride. My father moved like that. I sped up a little. We drew even and I saw a slender sword on his waist. That's what I thought. An expert swordsman. I glanced at his face and blinked. He was remarkably handsome. The man to his left was larger, his shoulders broader, his body emanating contained aggression. He didn't walk, he stalked, and you could tell by the way he moved that he would be very strong. His auburn hair looked like he'd rolled out of bed, dragged his hand through it, and gone on about his day. He wore dark pants and a black leather jacket that was more doublet than motorcycle. A ragged scar crossed his left cheek and when he turned his head, his eyes shone with yellow. Interesting. "It's always work with you," the russet-haired man said. "Some of us have to mind the safety of the realm," the blond said. A narrow smile curled his lips. "I've given the realm eight years of my life. It can bite me," his stocky companion retorted. "How far is it?" The slim man raised his left arm. A hawk dropped out of the sky and landed on his bracer. "We're almost there. Two blocks left." "Good. Let's get this crap and go home." They turned into the side street. "That bird smelled dead," Sean said.

It wasn’t just the flavors that knocked me on my ass. It was seeing different people holding it, preparing it, serving it. Sometimes the chefs were not in the white jackets, and it wasn’t only men, it was women, it was children, it was everyone. There were Indians, blacks, Koreans, mixed people. When I had my own restaurant someday, I thought, I would never rule out someone based on race or sex or nationality. I wouldn’t do it because it was egalitarian, I’d do it because cutting people out meant cutting off talent and opportunity, people who could bring more to the table than I could ever imagine. I felt like I was climbing aboard a new food train, one that I’m still on to this day.

Grigoryevich...Not that he had any real talent himself—but what a lot of deaths of talented people he had witnessed. Young physicists and historians, specialists in ancient languages, philosophers, musicians, young Russian Swifts and Erasmuses—how many of them he had seen put on their “wooden jackets.” Prerevolutionary literature had often lamented the fate of serf actors, musicians, and painters. But who was there today to write about the young men and women who had never had the chance to write their books and paint their paintings? The Russian earth is indeed fertile and generous. She gives birth to her own Platos, to her own quick-witted Newtons—but how casually and terribly she devours these children of hers.

The first missionaries who came among us were good men, but they were imbued with the narrowness of their age. They branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded that we renounce our gods as false. They even told us that we were eternally lost unless we adopted their faith and all its symbols. We of the twentieth century know better. We know that all religious aspiration, all sincere worship, can have but one source and goal. We know that the God of the educated and the God of the child, the God of the civilized and the God of the primitive, is after all the same God; and that this God does not measure our differences, but embraces all who live rightly and humbly on the earth. — Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman)

My friends, I have been asked to show you my heart. I am glad to have a chance to do so. I want the white people to understand my people. Some of you think an Indian is like a wild animal. This is a great mistake. I will tell you all about our people, and then you can judge whether an Indian is a man or not. I believe much trouble would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth. What I have to say will come straight from my heart, and I will speak with a straight tongue. The Great Spirit is looking at me, and will hear me. My name is In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat [Thunder Traveling over Mountains]. I am chief of the Wal-lamwat- kin band of the Chute-pa-lu, or Nez Perce. I was born in eastern Oregon, thirty-eight winters ago. My father was chief before me. When a young man, he was called Joseph by Mr. Spaulding, a missionary. He died a few years ago. He left a good name on earth. He advised me well for my people. Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all men as they treated us, that we should never be the first to break a bargain, that it was a disgrace to tell a lie, that we should speak only the truth, that it was a shame for one man to take from another his wife or his property without paying for it. We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that He never forgets; that hereafter

We had somehow drawn towards each other. I towered over her, taller than most men and built like an athlete. I never hunched. Never recoiled. I wore my height with pride. She raised her chin to combat me. I pushed her to be the best that she could be. “I know exactly who I am,” I said with every ounce of confidence I possessed. “What unsettles you, Rose, is that you have no idea what kind of guy that is.” I stepped closer and she stiffened. “If people stare at me and see my problems, then I’m useless to them. So I give them exactly what they want. I am whomever or whatever they need.” I held out my blazer again. “And you need a fucking jacket.” She reluctantly took the blazer but hesitated. “I can’t be you,” she said. “I can’t internalize all of my feelings. I don’t understand how you can do that.

The Clipper pulled away from its moorage, entered Long Island Sound off Queens, and began its takeoff run, bumping across a mile-long fetch of open water before at last lifting off, shedding water like a breaching whale. With a cruising speed of 145 miles per hour, the plane would need about six hours to reach its first stop, Bermuda. It flew at eight thousand feet, which pretty much ensured that it would encounter every cloud and storm in its path. There would be turbulence but also luxury. White-jacketed stewards served full meals on china in a dining compartment with tables, chairs, and tablecloths. At dinner men wore suits, women dresses; at night the stewards made up beds in curtained berths. Honeymooners could book a private suite in the plane’s tail and swoon at the moonglade on the sea below.

On August 10, 1984, my plane landed in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. There were no skyscrapers here. The blue domes of the mosques and the faded mountains were the only things rising above the adobe duvals (the houses). The mosques came alive in the evening with multivoiced wailing: the mullahs were calling the faithful to evening prayer. It was such an unusual spectacle that, in the beginning, I used to leave the barracks to listen – the same way that, in Russia, on spring nights, people go outside to listen to the nightingales sing. For me, a nineteen-year-old boy who had lived his whole life in Leningrad, everything about Kabul was exotic: enormous skies – uncommonly starry – occasionally punctured by the blazing lines of tracers. And spread out before you, the mysterious Asian capital where strange people were bustling about like ants on an anthill: bearded men, faces darkend by the sun, in solid-colored wide cotton trousers and long shirts. Their modern jackets, worn over those outfits, looked completely unnatural. And women, hidden under plain dull garments that covered them from head to toe: only their hands visible, holding bulging shopping bags, and their feet, in worn-out shoes or sneakers, sticking out from under the hems. And somewhere between this odd city and the deep black southern sky, the wailing, beautifully incomprehensible songs of the mullahs. The sounds didn't contradict each other, but rather, in a polyphonic echo, melted away among the narrow streets. The only thing missing was Scheherazade with her tales of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights ... A few days later I saw my first missile attack on Kabul. This country was at war.

Yuppieville. The fourteenth floor of Lock-Horne Investments & Securities reminded Myron of a medieval fortress. There was the vast space in the middle, and a thick, formidable wall—the big producers’ offices—safeguarding the perimeter. The open area housed hundreds of mostly men, young men, combat soldiers easily sacrificed and replaced, a seemingly endless sea of them, bobbing and blending into the corporate-gray carpet, the identical desks, the identical rolling chairs, the computer terminals, the telephones, the fax machines. Like soldiers they wore uniforms—white button-down shirts, suspenders, bright ties strangling carotid arteries, suit jackets draped across the backs of the identical rolling chairs. There were loud noises, screams, rings, even something that sounded like death cries. Everyone was in motion. Everyone was scattering, panicked, under constant attack. Yes,

Right then, Mel came into the bar, hung her jacket on the peg inside the door and jumped up on a stool in front of her husband, elbows on the bar, leaning toward him for a kiss. “Holy shit,” one of the men said. “Look at that one. Talk about a doe I’d like to bag.” Jack straightened before meeting his wife’s lips. The look on his face wasn’t a pretty one. “You know,” Mike said, laughing uncomfortably, “about our women. You boys don’t want to be giving the women around here any trouble. Trust me on this, okay?” That set up a round of hilarious laughter at the table of hunters and one of them said, unfortunately too loudly, “Maybe the girl wants to get bagged. I think we should at least ask her!” But oops—glancing over his shoulder, Mike saw Jack had heard that. And probably so had Mel. And after what those two had been through earlier in the summer, comments like that were not taken lightly. And

Well, now, if I didn’t think you sewed his collar with white thread, but it’s black.” “Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!” But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said: “Siddy, I’ll lick you for that.” In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them—one needle carried white thread and the other black. He said: “She’d never noticed if it hadn’t been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to geeminy she’d stick to one or t’other—I can’t keep the run of ’em. But I bet you I’ll lam Sid for that. I’ll learn him!” He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him. Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer. The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet.

Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More’s boy: offspring of a scholar all Europe admired, and poor young John can barely stumble through his Pater Noster. Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted. He speaks reverently to his superiors, not scuffling his feet or standing on one leg, and he is mild and polite with those below him. He knows how to bow to foreign diplomats in the manner of their own countries, sits at table without fidgeting or feeding spaniels, can neatly carve and joint any fowl if requested to serve his elders. He doesn’t slouch around with his jacket off one shoulder, or look in windows to admire himself, or stare around in church, or interrupt old men, or finish their stories for them. If anyone sneezes, he says, ‘Christ help you!

He will give every man a spirit-home according to his deserts: If he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same. We did not know there were other people besides the Indian until about one hundred winters ago, when some men with white faces came to our country. They brought many things with them to trade for furs and skins. They brought tobacco, which was new to us. They brought guns with flint stones on them, which frightened our women and children. Our people could not talk with these white-faced men, but they used signs which all people understand. These men were called Frenchmen, and they called our people “Nez Perce,” because they wore rings in their noses for ornaments. Although very few of our people wear them now, we are still called by the same name. These French trappers said a great many things to our fathers, which have been planted in our hearts. Some were good for us, but some were bad. Our

These men were very kind. They made presents to our chiefs and our people made presents to them. We had a great many horses, of which we gave them what they needed, and they gave us guns and tobacco in return. All the Nez Perce made friends with Lewis and Clark, and agreed to let them pass through their country, and never to make war on white men. This promise the Nez Perce have never broken. No white man can accuse them of bad faith and speak with a straight tongue. It has always been the pride of the Nez Perce that they were the friends of the white men. When my father was a young man there came to our country a white man [Rev. Henry H. Spaulding] who talked spirit law. He won the affections of our people because he spoke good things to them. At first he did not say anything about white men wanting to settle on our lands. Nothing was said about that until about twenty winters ago, when a number of white people came into our country and built houses and made farms. At first our people made no complaint. They thought there was room

Did you ever notice how very fickle males are?” she asked the horse. “And how very foolish females are about them?” she added, aware of how inexplicably deflated she felt. She realized as well that she was being completely irrational-she had not intended to come here, had not wanted him to be waiting, and now she felt almost like crying because he wasn’t! Giving the ribbons of her bonnet an impatient jerk, she untied them. Pulling the bonnet off, she pushed the back door of the cottage open, stepped inside-and froze in shock! Standing at the opposite side of the small room, his back to her, was Ian Thornton. His dark head was slightly bent as he gazed at the cheery little fire crackling in the fireplace, his hands shoved into the back waistband of his gray riding breeches, his booted foot upon the grate. He’d taken off his jacket, and beneath his soft lawn shirt his muscles flexed as he withdrew his right hand and shoved it through the side of his hair. Elizabeth’s gaze took in the sheer male beauty of his wide, masculine shoulders, his broad back and narrow waist. Something in the somber way he was standing-added to the fact that he’d waited more than two hours for her-made her doubt her earlier conviction that he hadn’t truly cared whether she came or not. And that was before she glanced sideways and saw the table. Her heart turned over when she saw the trouble he’d taken: A cream linen tablecloth covered with crude china, obviously borrowed from Charise’s house. In the center of the table a candle was lit, and a half-empty bottle of wine stood beside a platter of cold meat and cheese. In all her life Elizabeth had never known that a man could actually arrange a luncheon and set a table. Women did that. Women and servants. Not men who were so handsome they made one’s pulse race. It seemed she’d been standing there for several minutes, not mere seconds, when he stiffened suddenly, as if sensing her presence. He turned, and his harsh face softened with a wry smile: “You aren’t very punctual.” “I didn’t intend to come,” Elizabeth admitted, fighting to recover her balance and ignore the tug of his eyes and voice. “I got caught in the rain on my way to the village.” “You’re wet.” “I know.” “Come over by the fire.” When she continued to watch him warily, he took his foot off the grate and walked over to her. Elizabeth stood rooted to the floor, while all of Lucinda’s dark warnings about being alone with a man rushed through her mind. “What do you want?” she asked him breathlessly, feeling dwarfed by his towering height. “Your jacket.” “No-I think I’d like to keep it on.” “Off,” he insisted quietly. “It’s wet.” “Now see here!” she burst out backing toward the open door, clutching the edges of her jacket. “Elizabeth,” he said with reassuring calm, “I gave you my word you’d be safe if you came today.” Elizabeth briefly closed her eyes and nodded, “I know. I also know I shouldn’t be here. I really ought to leave. I should, shouldn’t I?” Opening her eyes again, she looked beseechingly into his-the seduced asking the seducer for advice. “Under the circumstances, I don’t think I’m the one you ought to ask.

Cheat wore a Valorian jacket Kestrel was sure she had seen on the governor the night before. He sat at the right hand of the empty head of the dining table, but stood when Kestrel and Arin entered. He approached. His eyes dragged over her. “Arin, your slave looks positively wild.” Lack of sleep made her thoughts broken and shiny, like pieces of mirrors on strings. Cheat’s words spun in her head. Arin tensed beside her. “No offense,” Cheat told him. “It was a compliment to your taste.” “What do you want, Cheat?” Arin said. The man stroked a thumb over his lower lip. “Wine.” He looked straight at Kestrel. “Get some.” The order itself wasn’t important. It was how Cheat had meant it: as the first of many, and how, in the end, they translated into one word: obey. The only thing that kept Kestrel’s face clean of her thoughts was the knowledge that Cheat would take pleasure in any resistance. Yet she couldn’t make herself move. “I’ll get the wine,” Arin said. “No,” Kestrel said. She didn’t want to be left alone with Cheat. “I’ll go.” For an uncertain moment, Arin stood awkwardly. Then he walked to the door and motioned a Herrani girl into the room. “Please escort Kestrel to the wine cellar, then bring her back here.” “Choose a good vintage,” Cheat said to Kestrel. “You’ll know the best.” As she left the room, his eyes followed her, glittering. She returned with a clearly labeled bottle of Valorian wine dated to the year of the Herran War. She placed it on the table in front of the two seated men. Arin’s jaw set, and he shook his head slightly. Cheat lost his grin. “This was the best,” Kestrel said. “Pour.” Cheat shoved his glass toward her. She uncorked the bottle and poured--and kept pouring, even as the red wine flowed over the glass’s rim, across the table, and onto Cheat’s lap. He jumped to his feet, swatting wine from his fine stolen clothes. “Damn you!” “You said I should pour. You didn’t say I should stop.” Kestrel wasn’t sure what would have happened next if Arin hadn’t intervened. “Cheat,” he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop playing games with what is mine.

game hunting was flourishing; and, dining at Muthaiga Club, I was offered trout freshly caught in the mountains, together with some last bottles of a particularly fragrant Rhine wine. Not since that last bright summer in Paris in 1939, when the wealthy of the world came flocking to spend their money lest they should not visit Paris again, had I seen women so well groomed, wearing so many lush furs. Baboon pelts and leopard skins were particularly popular. Great log fires burned in the grates of the club chimney places, though the nights were scarcely sharp. The men wore dinner-jackets or dress uniform. The conversation tended to hunting. In the day one had golf at Brackenridge, or swimming or riding or fooling round the game reserves where giraffe still roam haphazardly. Normally one looked in at a roadhouse for an apéritif around eight in the evening, and after dinner perhaps went down to Torr’s to dance. They say the altitude at Nairobi makes people slightly crazy, but after the desert I found it all delightful, as though the world were enjoying one long holiday. As

Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks smoked short pipes, swinging bare brown feet above the heads of those who, sprawling below on sea-chests, listened, smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over the white rims of berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the bodies were lost in the gloom of those places, that resembled narrow niches for coffins in a white-washed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder. Archie, with compressed lips, drew himself in, seemed to shrink into a smaller space, and sewed steadily, industrious and dumb. Belfast shrieked like an inspired Dervish: — ‘... So I seez to him, boys, seez I, “Beggin’ yer pardon, sorr,” seez I to that second mate of that steamer — “beggin’ your-r-r pardon, sorr, the Board of Trade must ‘ave been drunk when they granted you your certificate!” “What do you say, you — !” seez he, comin’ at me like a mad bull... all in his white clothes; and I up with my tarpot and capsizes it all over his blamed lovely face and his lovely jacket... “Take that!” seez I. “I am a sailor, anyhow, you nosing, skipper-licking, useless, sooperfloos bridge-stanchion, you! That’s the kind of man I am!” shouts I... You should have seed him skip, boys! Drowned, blind with

He went up to the counter and asked for his preferred brand at the same time that three other people asked for the same cigarettes, and the tobacconist slid them rapidly across the marble of the countertop toward the four hands holding out money - four identical packs, which the four hands picked up with identical gestures. Marcello noticed that he took the pack, squeezed it to see if it was fresh enough, and then ripped off the seal the same way the other three did. He even noticed that two of the three tucked the pack back inte a small inner pocket in their jackets, as he did. Finally, one of the three stopped just outside the tobacconist’s to light a cigarette with a silver lighter exactly like his own. These observations stirred a satisfied, almost voluptuous pleasure in him. Yes, he was the same as the others, the same as everyone. The same as the men who bought the same brand of cigarettes, with the same gestures, even the men who turned at the passage of a women dressed in red, himself among them, to eye the quiver of her solid buttocks under the thin material of the dress. Even if, as in this last gesture, the similarity was due more to willed imitation in his case than to any real personal inclination.

I suggest you stand slowly and walk out with my men,” Zrakovi said, tapping a napkin against his lying, two-faced mouth and putting a twenty on the table to cover the drinks. “If you make a scene, innocent humans will be injured. I have a Blue Congress cleanup team in place, however, so if you want to fight in public and damage a few humans, knock yourself out. It will only add to your list of crimes.” I stood slowly, gritting my teeth when Squirrel Chin patted me down while feeling me up and making it look like a romantic moment. He’d been so busy feeling the naughty bits that he missed both Charlie, sitting in my bag next to my foot, and the dagger attached to my inner forearm. Idiot. Alex would never have been so sloppy. If Alex had patted me down, he’d have found not only the weapons but also the portable magic kit. From the corner of my eye, I saw a tourist taking mobile phone shots of us. He’d no doubt email them to all his friends back home with stories of those crazy New Orleanians and their public displays of affection. I considered pretending to faint, but I was too badly outnumbered for it to work. Like my friend Jean Lafitte, whose help I could use about now, I didn’t want to try something unless it had a reasonable chance at succeeding. I also didn’t want to pull Charlie out and risk humans getting hurt. “Walk out the door onto Chartres and turn straight toward the cathedral.” Zrakovi pulled his jacket aside enough for me to see a shoulder holster. I hadn’t even known the man could hold a gun, although for all I knew about guns it could be a water pistol. The walk to the cathedral transport was three very long city blocks. My best escape opportunity would be near Jackson Square. When the muscular goons tried to turn me left toward the cathedral, I’d try to break and run right toward the river, where I could get lost among the wharves and docks long enough to draw and power a transport. Of course in order to run, I’d have to get away from the clinch of Dreadlocks and Squirrel Chin. Charlie could take care of that. I slipped the messenger bag over my head slowly, and not even Zrakovi noticed the stick of wood protruding from the top by a couple of inches. Not to be redundant, but . . . idiots. None of us spoke as we proceeded down Chartres Street, where, to our south, the clouds continued to build. The wind had grown stronger and drier. The hurricane was sucking all the humidity out of the air, all the better to gain intensity. I hoped Zrakovi, a Bostonian, would enjoy his first storm. I hoped a live oak landed on his head.

Elizabeth, we’re going to have to stop.” Elizabeth’s swirling senses began to return to reality, slowly at first, and then with a sickening plummet. Passion gave way to fear and then to anguished shame as she realized she was lying in a man’s arms, her shirt unfastened, her flesh exposed to his gaze and touch. Closing her eyes, she fought back the sting of tears and shoved his hand away, lurching into an upright position. “Let me rise, please,” she whispered, her voice strangled with self-revulsion. Her skin flinched as he began to fasten her shirt, but in order to do it he had to release his hold on her, and the moment he did, she scrambled to her feet. Turning her back to him, she fastened her shirt with shaking hands and snatched her jacket from the peg beside the fire. He moved so silently that she had no idea he’d stood until his hands settled on her stiff shoulders. “Don’t be frightened of what is between us. I’ll be able to provide for you-“ All of Elizabeth’s confusion and anguish exploded in a burst of tempestuous, sobbing fury that was directed at herself, but which she hurtled at him. Tearing free of his grasp, she whirled around. “Provide for me,” she cried. “Provide what? A-a hovel in Scotland where I’ll stay while you dress the part of an English gentleman so you can gamble away everything-“ “If things go on as I expect,” he interrupted her in a voice of taut calm, “I’ll be one of the richest men in England within a year-two at the most. If they don’t, you’ll still be well provided for.” Elizabeth snatched her bonnet and backed away from him in a fear that was partly of him and partly of her own weakness. “This is madness. Utter madness.” Turning, she headed for the door. “I know,” he said gently. She reached for the door handle and jerked the door open. Behind her, his voice stopped her in midstep. “If you change your mind after we leave in the morning, you can reach me at Hammund’s town house in Upper Brook Street until Wednesday. After that I’d intended to leave for India. I’ll be gone until winter.” “I-I hope you have a safe voyage,” she said, too overwrought to wonder about the sharp tug of loss she felt at the realization he was leaving. “If you change your mind in time,” he teased, “I’ll take you with me.” Elizabeth fled in sheer terror from the gentle confidence she’d heard in his smiling voice. As she galloped through the thick fog and wet underbrush she was no longer the sensible, confident young lady she’d been before; instead she was a terrified, bewildered girl with a mountain of responsibilities and an upbringing that convinced her the wild attraction she felt for Ian Thornton was sordid and unforgivable.

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. Oh my god, said the sergeant.

Sweet to me your voice, said Caolcrodha Mac Morna, brother to sweet-worded sweet-toothed Goll from Sliabh Riabhach and Brosnacha Bladhma, relate then the attributes that are to Finn's people. [...] I will relate, said Finn. Till a man has accomplished twelve books of poetry, the same is not taken for want of poetry but is forced away. No man is taken till a black hole is hollowed in the world to the depth of his two oxters and he put into it to gaze from it with his lonely head and nothing to him but his shield and a stick of hazel. Then must nine warriors fly their spears at him, one with the other and together. If he be spear-holed past his shield, or spear-killed, he is not taken for want of shield-skill. No man is taken till he is run by warriors through the woods of Erin with his hair bunched-loose about him for bough-tangle and briar-twitch. Should branches disturb his hair or pull it forth like sheep-wool on a hawthorn, he is not taken but is caught and gashed. Weapon-quivering hand or twig-crackling foot at full run, neither is taken. Neck-high sticks he must pass by vaulting, knee-high sticks by stooping. With the eyelids to him stitched to the fringe of his eye-bags, he must be run by Finn's people through the bogs and the marsh-swamps of Erin with two odorous prickle-backed hogs ham-tied and asleep in the seat of his hempen drawers. If he sink beneath a peat-swamp or lose a hog, he is not accepted of Finn's people. For five days he must sit on the brow of a cold hill with twelve-pointed stag-antlers hidden in his seat, without food or music or chessmen. If he cry out or eat grass-stalks or desist from the constant recital of sweet poetry and melodious Irish, he is not taken but is wounded. When pursued by a host, he must stick a spear in the world and hide behind it and vanish in its narrow shelter or he is not taken for want of sorcery. Likewise he must hide beneath a twig, or behind a dried leaf, or under a red stone, or vanish at full speed into the seat of his hempen drawers without changing his course or abating his pace or angering the men of Erin. Two young fosterlings he must carry under the armpits to his jacket through the whole of Erin, and six arm-bearing warriors in his seat together. If he be delivered of a warrior or a blue spear, he is not taken. One hundred head of cattle he must accommodate with wisdom about his person when walking all Erin, the half about his armpits and the half about his trews, his mouth never halting from the discoursing of sweet poetry. One thousand rams he must sequester about his trunks with no offence to the men of Erin, or he is unknown to Finn. He must swiftly milk a fat cow and carry milk-pail and cow for twenty years in the seat of his drawers. When pursued in a chariot by the men of Erin he must dismount, place horse and chariot in the slack of his seat and hide behind his spear, the same being stuck upright in Erin. Unless he accomplishes these feats, he is not wanted of Finn. But if he do them all and be skilful, he is of Finn's people.

A breathtaking vision in emerald silk, she was too exquisite to be flesh and blood; too regal and aloof to have ever let him touch her. He drew a long, strangled breath and realized he hadn’t been breathing as he watched her. Neither had the four men beside him. “Good Lord,” Count Dillard breathed, turning clear around and staring at her, “she cannot possibly be real.” “Exactly my thoughts when I first saw her,” Roddy Carstairs averred, walking up behind them. “I don’t care what gossip says,” Dillard continued, so besotted with her face that he forgot that one of the men in their circle was a part of that gossip. “I want an introduction.” He handed his glass to Roddy instead of the servant beside him and went off to seek an introduction from Jordan Townsende. Watching him, it took a physical effort for Ian to maintain his carefully bland expression, tear his gaze from Dillard’s back, and pay attention to Roddy Carstairs, who’d just greeted him. In fact, it took several moments before Ian could even remember his name. “How are you, Carstairs?” Ian said, finally recollecting it. “Besotted, like half the males in here, it would seem,” Roddy replied, tipping his head toward Elizabeth but scrutinizing Ian’s bland face and annoyed eyes. “In fact, I’m so besotted that for the second time in my jaded career I’ve done the gallant for a damsel in distress. Your damsel, unless my intuition deceives me, and it never does, actually.” Ian lifted his glass to his lips, watching Dillard bow to Elizabeth. “You’ll have to be more specific,” he said impatiently. “Specifically, I’ve been saying that in my august opinion no one, but no one, has ever besmirched that exquisite creature. Including you.” Hearing him talk about Elizabeth as if she were a morsel for public delectation sent a blaze of fury through Ian. He was spared having to form a reply to Carstairs’s remark by the arrival of yet another group of people eager to be introduced to him, and he endured, as he had been enduring all night, a flurry of curtsies, flirtatious smiles, inviting glances, and overeager hanshakes and bos. “How does it feel,” Roddy inquired as that group departed and another bore down on Ian, “to have become, overnight, England’s most eligible bachelor?” Ian answered him and abruptly walked off, and in so doing dashed the hopes of the new group that had been heading toward him. The gentleman beside Roddy, who’d been admiring Ian’s magnificently tailored claret jacket and trousers, leaned closer to Roddy and raised his voice to be heard above the din. “I say, Roddy, how did Kensington say it feels to be our most eligible?” Roddy lowered his glass, a sardonic smile twisting his lips. “He said it is a pain in the ass.” He slid a sideways glance at his staggered companion and added wryly, “With Hawthorne wed and Kensington soon to be-in my opinion-the only remaining bachelor with a dukedom to offer is Clayton Westmoreland. Given the uproar Hawthorne and Kensington have both created with their courtships, one can only look forward with glee to observing Westmoreland’s.

The other thing preferable about the weekday services is that no one is there against his will. That’s another distraction on Sundays. Who hasn’t suffered the experience of having an entire family seated in the pew in front of you, the children at war with each other and sandwiched between the mother and father who are forcing them to go to church? An aura of stale arguments almost visibly clings to the hasty clothing of the children. “This is the one morning I can sleep in!” the daughter’s linty sweater says. “I get so bored!” says the upturned collar of the son’s suit jacket. Indeed, the children imprisoned between their parents move constantly and restlessly in the pew; they are so crazy with self-pity, they seem ready to scream. The stern-looking father who occupies the aisle seat has his attention interrupted by fits of vacancy—an expression so perfectly empty accompanies his sternness and his concentration that I think I glimpse an underlying truth to the man’s churchgoing: that he is doing it only for the children, in the manner that some men with much vacancy of expression are committed to a marriage. When the children are old enough to decide about church for themselves, this man will stay home on Sundays. The frazzled mother, who is the lesser piece of bread to this family sandwich—and who is holding down that part of the pew from which the most unflattering view of the preacher in the pulpit is possible (directly under the preacher’s jowls)—is trying to keep her hand off her daughter’s lap. If she smooths out her daughter’s skirt only one more time, both of them know that the daughter will start to cry. The son takes from his suit jacket pocket a tiny, purple truck; the father snatches this away—with considerable bending and crushing of the boy’s fingers in the process. “Just one more obnoxious bit of behavior from you,” the father whispers harshly, “and you will be grounded—for the rest of the day.” “The whole rest of the day?” the boy says, incredulous. The apparent impossibility of sustaining unobnoxious behavior for even part of the day weighs heavily on the lad, and overwhelms him with a claustrophobia as impenetrable as the claustrophobia of church itself. The daughter has begun to cry. “Why is she crying?” the boy asks his father, who doesn’t answer. “Are you having your period?” the boy asks his sister, and the mother leans across the daughter’s lap and pinches the son’s thigh—a prolonged, twisting sort of pinch. Now he is crying, too. Time to pray! The kneeling pads flop down, the family flops forward. The son manages the old hymnal trick; he slides a hymnal along the pew, placing it where his sister will sit when she’s through praying. “Just one more thing,” the father mutters in his prayers. But how can you pray, thinking about the daughter’s period? She looks old enough to be having her period, and young enough for it to be the first time. Should you move the hymnal before she’s through praying and sits on it? Should you pick up the hymnal and bash the boy with it? But the father is the one you’d like to hit; and you’d like to pinch the mother’s thigh, exactly as she pinched her son. How can you pray?

It had had a fragrant element, reminding him of a regular childhood experience, a memory that reverberated like the chimes of a prayer bell inside his head. For a few moments, he pictured the old Orthodox church that had dominated his remote Russian village. The bearded priest was swinging the elaborate incense-burner, suspended from gold-plated chains. It had been the same odour. Hadn’t it? He blinked, shook his head. He couldn’t make sense of that. He decided, with an odd lack of enthusiasm, that he’d imagined it. The effects of the war played tricks of the mind, of the senses. Looking over his shoulder, he counted all seven of his men as they emerged from the remnants of the four-storey civic office building. A few muddied documents were scattered on the ground, stamped with the official Nazi Party eagle, its head turned to the left, and an emblem he failed to recognize, but which looked to him like a decorative wheel, with a geometrical design of squares at its centre. Even a blackened flag had survived the bomb damage. Hanging beneath a crumbling windowsill, the swastika flapped against the bullet-ridden façade, the movement both panicky and defiant, Pavel thought. His men were conscripts. A few still wore their padded khaki jackets and mustard-yellow blouses. Most, their green field tunics and forage caps. All the clothing was lice-ridden and smeared with soft ash. Months of exposure to frozen winds had darkened their skins and narrowed their eyes. They’d been engaged in hazardous reconnaissance missions. They’d slept rough and had existed on a diet of raw husks and dried horsemeat. Haggard and weary now, he reckoned they’d aged well beyond their years.

What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks! 'tis whole again; oars! oars! Burst in upon him! I grow blind; hands! stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night? Oars, oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark; I see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! - Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say ye fools. Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my lifelong fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now! - Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though; cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die! - Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up.

The defenders retreated, but in good order. A musket flamed and a ball shattered a marine’s collar bone, spinning him around. The soldiers screamed terrible battle-cries as they began their grim job of clearing the defenders off the parapet with quick professional close-quarter work. Gamble trod on a fallen ramrod and his boots crunched on burnt wadding. The French reached steps and began descending into the bastion. 'Bayonets!' Powell bellowed. 'I want bayonets!' 'Charge the bastards!' Gamble screamed, blinking another man's blood from his eyes. There was no drum to beat the order, but the marines and seamen surged forward. 'Tirez!' The French had been waiting, and their muskets jerked a handful of attackers backwards. Their officer, dressed in a patched brown coat, was horrified to see the savage looking men advance unperturbed by the musketry. His men were mostly conscripts and they had fired too high. Now they had only steel bayonets with which to defend themselves. 'Get in close, boys!' Powell ordered. 'A Shawnee Indian named Blue Jacket once told me that a naked woman stirs a man's blood, but a naked blade stirs his soul. So go in with the steel. Lunge! Recover! Stance!' 'Charge!' Gamble turned the order into a long, guttural yell of defiance. Those redcoats and seamen, with loaded weapons discharged them at the press of the defenders, and a man in the front rank went down with a dark hole in his forehead. Gamble saw the officer aim a pistol at him. A wounded Frenchman, half-crawling, tried to stab with his sabre-briquet, but Gamble kicked him in the head. He dashed forward, sword held low. The officer pulled the trigger, the weapon tugged the man's arm to his right, and the ball buzzed past Gamble's mangled ear as he jumped down into the gap made by the marines charge. A French corporal wearing a straw hat drove his bayonet at Gamble's belly, but he dodged to one side and rammed his bar-hilt into the man's dark eyes. 'Lunge! Recover! Stance!

His choice had to be swift as the wind. Should he take cover behind the row in front of him and toss the bit of metal in the snow (it'd be noticed but they wouldn't know who the culprit was) or keep it on him? For that strip of hacksaw he could get ten days in the cells, if they classed it as a knife. But a cobbler's knife was money, it was bread. A pity to throw it away. He slipped it into his left mitten. At that moment the next row was ordered to step forward and be searched. Now the last three men stood in full view-- Senka, Shukhov, and the man from the 32nd squad who had gone to look for the Moldavian. Because they were three and the guards facing them were five, Shukhov could try a ruse. He could choose which of the two guards on the right to present himself to. He decided against a young pink-faced one and plumped for an older man with a gray mustache. The older one, of course, was experienced and could find the blade easily if he wanted to, but because of his age he would be fed up with the job. It must stink in his nose now like burning sulfur. Meanwhile Shukhov had removed both mittens, the empty one and the one with the hacksaw, and held them in one hand (the empty one in front) together with the untied rope belt. He fully unbuttoned his jacket, lifted high the edges of his coat and jacket (never had he been so servile at the search but now he wanted to show he was innocent--Come on, frisk me!), and at the word of command stepped forward. The guard slapped Shukhov's sides and back, and the outside of his pants pocket. Nothing there. He kneaded the edges of coat and jacket. Nothing there either. He was about to pass him through when, for safety's sake, he crushed the mitten that Shukhov held out to him--the empty one. The guard crushed it in his band, and Shukhov felt as though pincers of iron were crushing everything inside him. One such squeeze on the other mitten and he'd be sunk--the cells on nine ounces of bread a day and hot stew one day in three. He imagined how weak he'd grow, how difficult he'd find it to get back to his present condition, neither fed nor starving. And an urgent prayer rose in his heart: "Oh Lord, save me! Don't let them send me to the cells." And while all this raced through his mind, the guard, after finishing with the right-hand mitten, stretched a hand out to deal with the other (he would have squeezed them at the same moment if Shukhov had held them in separate hands). Just then the guard heard his chief, who was in a hurry to get on, shout to the escort: "Come on, bring up the machine-works column." And instead of examining the other mitten the old guard waved Shukhov on. He was through. He ran off to catch up with the others. They had already formed fives in a sort of corridor between long beams, like horse stalls in a market, a sort of paddock for prisoners. He ran lightly; hardly feeling the ground. He didn't say a prayer of thanksgiving because he hadn't time, and anyway it would have been out of place. The escort now drew aside.

The translucent, golden punch tastes velvety, voluptuous and not off-puttingly milky. Under its influence, I stage a party for my heroines in my imagination, and in my flat. It's less like the glowering encounter I imagined between Cathy Earnshaw and Flora Poste, and more like the riotous bash in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Not everyone is going to like milk punch. So there are also dirty martinis, and bagels and baklava, and my mother's masafan, Iraqi marzipan. The Little Mermaid is in the bath, with her tail still on, singing because she never did give up her soaring voice. Anne Shirley and Jo March are having a furious argument about plot versus character, gesticulating with ink-stained hands. Scarlett is in the living room, her skirts taking up half the space, trying to show Lizzy how to bat her eyelashes. Lizzy is laughing her head off ut Scarlett has acquired a sense of humour, and doesn't mind a bit. Melanie is talking book with Esther Greenwood, who has brought her baby and also the proofs of her first poetry collection. Franny and Zooey have rolled back the rug and are doing a soft shoe shuffle in rhinestone hats. Lucy Honeychurch is hammering out some Beethoven (in this scenario I have a piano. A ground piano. Well, why not?) Marjorie Morningstar is gossiping about directors with Pauline and Posy Fossil. They've come straight from the shows they're in, till in stage make-up and full of stories. Petrova, in a leather aviator jacket, goggles pushed back, a chic scarf knotted around her neck, is telling the thrilling story of her latest flight and how she fixed an engine fault in mid-air. Mira, in her paint-stained jeans and poncho, is listening, fascinated, asking a thousand questions. Mildred has been persuaded to drink a tiny glass of sherry, then another tiny glass, then another and now she and Lolly are doing a wild, strange dance in the hallway, stamping their feet, their hair flying wild and electric. Lolly's cakes, in the shape of patriarchs she hates, are going down a treat. The Dolls from the Valley are telling Flora some truly scandalous and unrepeatable stories, and she is firmly advising them to get rid of their men and find worthier paramours. Celie is modelling trousers of her own design and taking orders from the Lace women; Judy is giving her a ten-point plan on how to expand her business to an international market. She is quite drunk but nevertheless the plan seems quite coherent, even if it is punctuated by her bellowing 'More leopard print, more leopard print!' Cathy looks tumultuous and on the edge of violent weeping and just as I think she's going to storm out or trash my flat, Jane arrives, late, with an unexpected guest. Cathy turns in anticipation: is it Heathcliff? Once I would have joined her but now I'm glad it isn't him. It's a better surprise. It's Emily's hawk. Hero or Nero. Jane's found him at last, and has him on her arm, perched on her glove; small for a bird of prey, he is dashing and patrician looking, brown and white, observing the room with dark, flinty eyes. When Cathy sees him, she looks at Jane and smiles. And in the kitchen is a heroine I probably should have had when I was four and sitting on my parents' carpet, wishing it would fly. In the kitchen is Scheherazade.

Their code said to fight with fearlessness and restraint, to celebrate victories not death, and to know when it was time to answer a higher call. Franz gazed at the men in the waist tending one another’s wounds. He looked into the ashen face of the ball turret gunner. He thought about what his brother August would have done. A gear clicked in Franz’s soul. He laid a hand over the pocket of his jacket and felt his rosary beads within. This will be no victory for me, Franz decided. I will not have this on my conscience for the rest of my life.1

They kissed, and I held my breath, watching their lips move, their arms tighten around each other, Nathaniel’s hands tensing against the back of Micah’s suit jacket so he could feel the muscles underneath the elegant conservative cloth. They broke from the kiss and looked at me, both of their faces full front, nearly side by side, so that I got the full impact of those clean, sculpted lines, the half-parted lips, their arms still loosely around each other. I’d like to say I said something profound, or poetic, but what I actually said was, “Wow.” Nathaniel grinned. “I think she liked watching.” Micah smiled and held one hand out to me, an invitation to join them. I tried to get up and forgot my seat belt again, and then it was as if I’d forgotten how it worked. I had to fight with it, and the men were laughing as I said, “You have kissed me stupid and I wasn’t even part of the kiss.” “Do you need help?” Micah asked, his voice full of laughter.

All i can say to women is to guard your personal space with discrimination, anno every and anybody to get access to your life so they can have a story to tell about you. For what they do inno hun, is tek the likkle weh dem know bout you and spread it like that is you. A few composite of events , experiences and perceptions makes someone create this tabloid about you not knowing anything about you. I don't let people get close to me anymore. Some people who managed to do so, should already know that i will never allow them to get so close to me that they get a platform to fabricate stories about me. What's worse, in this time and age, people are quick to believe the worse of others. I don't make it bother me, am like oil, that shit don't stick it just rolls the fuck off. Not only that, they can't lower me for oil never sinks, don't even try mixing it, it will float right back on top.

If the purpose of reversal dress is to be radical, why sycophantically surrender to the dress code of men?41 Why does ‘gender-neutral’ clothing always look like men’s clothing when shirts, ties, smart shoes and suit jackets are hated work uniforms for many men and symbols of exclusion and oppression for most working-class men and women? Why does the ‘gender-neutral’ body have to resemble that of an emaciated young boy?

Nerissa, mo grá,” he said weakly, from where he had been dragged to a corner and propped up against someone’s jacket. “Mo cróga, bean laoch álainn.” He was still in the bloodied breeches, a clean band of linen wound just above one knee. “My brave, beautiful warrior woman.” His eyes, deep and bottomless in the lantern-lit darkness, looked up at her through their absurdly long lashes, and she reached a hand, still smelling of gunpowder, down to touch his bristled cheek. He closed his eyes and held it there, reluctant to ever let her go, and she reveling in the warmth of his skin beneath hers, the knowledge that his heart still pumped his lifeblood beneath her hand. “I could not let you die,” she breathed, kneeling down beside him and offering him the strength of her own slim, lithe body. His face was ghostly from loss of blood, and she could see that it was an effort for him to even keep his eyes open, let alone press her hand to his cheek. She sat down on the hard, blood-stained planking and gently gathered him in her arms, stroking his heavy curls as he rested his forehead against her shoulder. “Tá tú mo banlaoch,” he whispered. “My heroine. My savior….” “Sleep, Ruaidri. The ship is back in your men’s hands and you, my love, are safe in mine.” She threaded her fingers up through his hair and gently caressed his scalp, wincing at the hard swelling she found there. She did not want to think about how he must have received it. She did not want to think of him being hurt, she did not want to think of anything but how grateful she was that he was alive and safely in her arms. Hadley… the Royal Navy… Lucien. Strength and a hard, ruthless confidence filled her heart. She had come this far. She could deal with all of them. Ruaidri’s forehead grew heavy against her collarbone. He murmured something unintelligible and, with her hand still quietly caressing him, finally gave himself up to the demands of his body and slept.

All right there, mate?’ Clark jumped and turned round. He straightened up and looked at Billy, recognition taking a few seconds. Billy’s hair was shorter now, and his face was tanned. ‘Christ, you startled me,’ he said. ‘What have you got there?’ Clark held up the jar by a piece of tatty string. ‘Sticklebacks!’ For a moment his blue eyes shone with excitement, then they clouded over. He ran a wet hand through his red hair and swept it off his face. His freckles were more pronounced than usual, and for a moment Billy saw him as an eleven-year-old again. He felt his throat constrict, which made his next sentence a strangled croak. ‘We had fun, didn’t we, Clark?’ Clark snorted and set the jar of fish down on a large stone. He waded out of the water and sat down heavily on the bank. Billy edged closer and then tentatively sat down next to him. ‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ said Clark. ‘Look, Clark. Can’t we be friends again?’ ‘Can’t we be friends again?’ mimicked Clark. ‘We’re not in the school playground now, Billy.’ ‘Why did you come here?’ asked Billy. Clark thought for a moment. ‘To reflect.’ He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a brown envelope. ‘Here,’ he said, thrusting it into Billy’s hands. Billy opened the envelope and stared at the contents. ‘You’ve been called up?’ ‘Military training,’ explained Clark. Billy knew it was only a matter of time. Since Parliament had passed the Act in April, all men aged twenty and twenty-one were required to undertake six months’ military training. He didn’t know what to say. ‘Clark, look …’ He passed the envelope back. ‘How’s Chrissie?’ asked Clark, looking Billy directly in the eye. Billy was taken by surprise at the sudden mention of her name and picked at a blade of grass. ‘She’s fine, thanks. In fact she’s with me now, over there.’ Clark looked in the direction of Billy’s finger and Chrissie slid out sheepishly from behind a tree.

Above everything, remember that we should dress to live and not live to dress. If you go riding on a wet day, you will (you should) end up spattered with mud. If you take your children on a summer picnic, you might do well to start out in a navy blue reefer jacket, white flannel trousers and co-respondent shoes – but it is a testament to a very fine day indeed if you end up with ice cream smeared over the knees of your trousers; the dog’s footprints on the white buckskin of your shoes; your wife’s lipstick on your face and a few strands of burnished gold from your daughter’s head on your shoulder as you carry her, flushed, sun-kissed and sleepy, homeward bound.

Probably the best-known images of any Cherokee are those of Sequoyah, who is virtually always pictured wearing what appears to be a turban and blue jacket of European design. Both were, in fact, common clothing among Cherokee of that era, though not the tribe’s original dress. Although some have claimed the turban as evidence of pre-European contact by Arabs, the real origin of the outfit was more recent. When the first delegation of Cherokee visited England, the tattooed heads and bodies of the men were deemed too savage and frightening for their audience with the Royal Family. To cover up these markings, they were given English smoking jackets and turbans, such as those worn by the Muslim servants of the royal household. For whatever reason, these styles caught on among the people of the Five Civilized Tribes and continue to be part of cultural dress among the Cherokee.

The two CIA men had donned flak jackets and unslung their own rifles, accurized AK-74s. The sight of the Eastern Bloc weapons had raised a few eyebrows at first, but there were no comments now. Just silence. And they waited.....