People's Elbow Quotes

Think of two people, living together day after day, year after year, in this small space, standing elbow to elbow cooking at the same small stove, squeezing past each other on the narrow stairs, shaving in front of the same small bathroom mirror, constantly jogging, jostling, bumping against each other’s bodies by mistake or on purpose, sensually, aggressively, awkwardly, impatiently, in rage or in love – think what deep though invisible tracks they must leave, everywhere, behind them!

Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven't answered me." I probably still haven't completely adapted to the world," I said after giving it some thought. "I don't know, I feel like this isn't the real world. The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me." Midori rested an elbow on the bar and looked at me. "There was something like that in a Jim Morrison song, I'm pretty sure." People are strange when you're a stranger.

I elbow my way through the mass of people to get to my locker because there's something immensely satisfying about the toughest part of my arm connecting with the softest part of everyone else.

Life had been a suit I'd only put on for special occasions. Most of the time I kept it in the back of my closet, forgetting it was there. We were meant to die when it was barely stitched anymore, when the elbows and knees were stained with grass and mud, shoulder pads uneven from people hugging you all the time, downpours and blistering sun, the fabric faded, buttons gone.

The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.

I sprang toward him with the stake, hoping to catch him by surprise. But Dimitri was hard to catch by surprise. And he was fast. Oh, so fast. It was like he knew what I was going to do before I did it. He halted my attack with a glancing blow to the side of my head. I knew it would hurt later, but my adrenaline was running too strong for me to pay attention to it now. Distantly, I realized some other people had come to watch us. Dimitri and I were celebrities in different ways around here, and our mentoring relationship added to the drama. This was prime-time entertainment. My eyes were only on Dimitri, though. As we tested each other, attacking and blocking, I tried to remember everything he'd taught me. I also tried to remember everything I knew about him. I'd practiced with him for months. I knew him, knew his moves, just as he knew mine. I could anticipate him the same way. Once I started using that knowledge, the fight grew tricky. We were too well matched, both of us too fast. My heart thumped in my chest, and sweat coated my skin. Then Dimitri finally got through. He moved in for an attack, coming at me with the full force of his body. I blocked the worst of it, but he was so strong that I was the one who stumbled from the impact. He didn't waste the opportunity and dragged me to the ground, trying to pin me. Being trapped like that by a Strigoi would likely result in the neck being bitten or broken. I couldn't let that happen. So, although he held most of me to the ground, I managed to shove my elbow up and nail him in the face. He flinched and that was all I needed. I rolled him over and held him down. He fought to push me off, and I pushed right back while also trying to maneuver my stake. He was so strong, though. I was certain I wouldn't be able to hold him. Then, just as I thought I'd lose my hold, I got a good grip on the stake. And like that, the stake came down over his heart. It was done. Behind me, people were clapping but all I noticed was Dimitri. Our gazes were locked. I was still straddling him, my hands pressed against his chest. Both of us were sweaty and breathing heavily. His eyes looked at me with pride—and hell of a lot more. He was so close and my body yearned for him, again thinking he was a piece of me I needed in order to be complete. The air between us seemed warm and heady, and I would have given anything in that moment to lie down with him and have his arms wrap around me. His expression showed that he was thinking the same thing. The fight was finished, but remnants of the adrenaline and animal intensity remained.

He didn’t save us ; haven’t you been listening?” Elizabeth held an icepack to her chin where she’d been hit by an meaty elbow . “Fiona stabbed one of them with a Susan Bates needle, Marie was wielding a tequila bottle, Sandra pistol-whipped the other, and I shot the third.” “Where were Janie and Kat?” Ashley looked from me to Kat. “Hiding behind the couch like sane people!” Kat said before anyone else could speak.

When the mountain quaked Like an elbow's nudge Like a shout that something is wrong The people awoke and Knew, yes, knew, that bandits had come

I suppose I could spend time theorizing how it is that people are not bad to each other, but that’s really not the point. The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what’s too high, or what’s been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it’s always a lie that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always.

People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline. As she leafs through the pages, the rest of it fades away: the flurry of elbows and purses, the woman in a tunic biting her fingernails, the two teenagers with blaring headphones, even the man playing the violin at the other end of the car, its reedy tune working its way through the crowd. The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and just like that, she’s grounded again.

When you think of it, people may rub elbows and still have an ocean or two between them.

When you get older, you notice your sheets are dirty. Sometimes, you do something about it. And sometimes, you read the front page of the newspaper and sometimes you floss and sometimes you stop biting your nails and sometimes you meet a friend for lunch. You still crave lemonade, but the taste doesn’t satisfy you as much as it used to. You still crave summer, but sometimes you mean summer, five years ago. You remember your umbrella, you check up on people to see if they got home, you leave places early to go home and make toast. You stand by the toaster in your underwear and a big t-shirt, wondering if you should just turn in or watch one more hour of television. You laugh at different things. You stop laughing at other things. You think about old loves almost like they are in a museum. The socks, you notice, aren’t organized into pairs and you mentally make a note of it. You cover your mouth when you sneeze, reaching for the box of tissues you bought, contains aloe. When you get older, you try different shampoos. You find one you like. You try sleeping early and spin class and jogging again. You try a book you almost read but couldn’t finish. You wrap yourself in the blankets of: familiar t-shirts, caffe au lait, dim tv light, texts with old friends or new people you really want to like and love you. You lose contact with friends from college, and only sometimes you think about it. When you do, it feels bad and almost bitter. You lose people, and when other people bring them up, you almost pretend like you know what they are doing. You try to stop touching your face and become invested in things like expensive salads and trying parsnips and saving up for a vacation you really want. You keep a spare pen in a drawer. You look at old pictures of yourself and they feel foreign and misleading. You forget things like: purchasing stamps, buying more butter, putting lotion on your elbows, calling your mother back. You learn things like balance: checkbooks, social life, work life, time to work out and time to enjoy yourself. When you get older, you find yourself more in control. You find your convictions appealing, you find you like your body more, you learn to take things in stride. You begin to crave respect and comfort and adventure, all at the same time. You lay in your bed, fearing death, just like you did. You pull lint off your shirt. You smile less and feel content more. You think about changing and then often, you do.

Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple the population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?

Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it. What a wondrous place this was - crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker of the House of Commons to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ('Please Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue.') What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course. How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view. All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you.

He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely 'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!' 'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.' 'No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.

She let Sicarius lead since he had that knack for getting people to move out of his way without doing anything. Amaranthe, on the other hand, received elbows in the ribs or suggestive jostles from drunken men. Maybe she should try wearing all black and glaring more often.

A dingily bilious sun was seeping through a tent of black clouds. Passersby, spitefully elbowing elbows, were rushing along the pavement. People thronging the doorways of shops tried to pummel their way through and stuck fast, their faces flushed with spite and fury, their teeth bared.

Grandma Estella used to bathe me there when I was younger, working my knees and elbow with a washcloth and Ivory soap. Once, I asked her why she needed to scrub so hard it hurt. "Because we are not dirty people," she had said. Later, when I asked Mama about it, she told me when Grandma Estella was a little girl, her own teachers called her a dirty Mexican and it never left her, the shame of dirt.

She is like no one you have ever met. She cares not what people may think of her. She follows entirely her own course.” He sits forward, placing his elbows on his knees, dropping his voice to a whisper. “She can look at a person and see right into their very soul. There is not a drop of harshness in her. She will take a person for who they are, not what they are not or ought to be.” He glances at Eliza. “Those are rare qualities, are they not?

Which leaves June, next to him, leaning on one elbow with her nose buried in the issue of People she’s inexplicably brought with them. She always chooses the most bizarre reading material for flights. Last time, it was a battered old Cantonese phrase book. Before that, Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Up here on this forgotten elbow of land, I have nothing to lose, and though I am more afraid now than I have ever been, I am relieved, I am unburdened, I am ascending.

What?” he asked, finishing the second of his nine-ounce steaks, medium rare. “Why are you looking at me that way?” [...] I sighed theatrically, resting my chin on my cupped hands and bracing my elbows on the table. “You are too gorgeous, you know?” I said it just loud enough that the people who’d been watching us surreptitiously could hear me. Unholy laughter lit his eyes—telling me he’d been noticing the looks we’d been getting. But his face was completely serious, as he purred, “So. Am I worth what you paid for me, baby?” I loved it when he played along with me. I sighed again, a sound that I drew up from my toes, a contented, happy sound. I’d get him back for that “baby.” Just see if I didn’t. “Oh, yes,” I told our audience. “I’ll tell Jesse that she was right. Go for the sexy beast, she told me. If you’re going to shell out the money, don’t settle.” He threw back his head and laughed until he had to wipe tears of hilarity off his face. “Jeez, Mercy,” he said. “The things you say.” Then he leaned across the table and kissed me. A while later he pulled back, grinned at me, and sat back in his chair. I had to catch my breath before I spoke. “Best five bucks I ever spent,” I told him fervently.

Nate had been born and raised in British Columbia, and Canadians hate, above all things, to offend. It was part of the national consciousness. "Be polite" was an unwritten, unspoken rule, but ingrained into the psyche of an entire country. (Of course, as with any rule, there were exceptions: parts of Quebec, where people maintained the "dismissive to the point of confrontation, with subsequent surrender" mind-set of the French; and hockey, in which any Canadian may, with impunity, slam, pummel, elbow, smack, punch, body-check, and beat the shit out of, with sticks, any other human being, punctuated by profanities, name-calling, questioning parentage, and accusations of bestiality, usually-coincidentally- in French.)

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write -- feels, presumably, that he has something new to say -- and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.

...by tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self-publishing. Thus people who don't know their apostrophe from their elbow are positively invited to disseminate their writings to anyone on the planet stupid enough to double-click and scroll.

...It's not that she has not tried to improve her condition before acknowledging its hopelessness. (Oh, come on, let's get the hell out of this, and get into the first person.) I have sought, by study, to better my form and make myself Society's Darling. You see, I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock about a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen, but I thought that maybe I might be the girl to start the vogue. I would become brilliant. I would sparkle. I would hold whole dinner tables spellbound. I would have throngs fighting to come within hearing distance of me while the weakest, elbowed mercilessly to the outskirts, would cry "What did she say?" or "Oh, please ask her to tell it again." That's what I would do. Oh I could just hear myself." -Review of the books, Favorite Jokes of Famous People, by Bruce Barton; The Technique of the Love Affair by "A Gentlewoman." (Actually by Doris Langley Moore.) Review title: Wallflower's Lament; November 17, 1928.

Being a woman had closed many doors to Hazel Sinnett, but it had also revealed to her a valuable tool in her arsenal: women were almost entirely overlooked as people, which gave her the power of invisibility. People saw women, they saw the dresses women wore on public walks through the park, and the gloved hands they rested on their suitors’ elbows at the theater, but women were never threats.

Dancing is spiritual. Dancing is personal. Some people look at a dancing person and say, What a total show-off. They only notice the body of the dancing person. They look at the way the elbows jut out, the way the hips shake and the neck bends. They criticize all of these things, saying, This dancing person shouldn't be dancing. This dancing person has no rhythm. But the dancer is immune to all of this.

...writing a novel is buttering warm toast, while writing a history is herding porcupines with your elbows.

Time to say thank you and farewell! trills Effie at my elbow. It’s one of those moments when I just love her compulsive punctuality. We collect Cinna and Portia, and she escorts us around to say good-bye to important people, then herds us to the door.

Jim waited for us at the Gold Gate. His teeth were bared. “What happened to barely winning?” “You said sloppy! Look, I didn’t even use my sword; I hit him with my head like a moron.” “A man with a sword attacked you and you disarmed him and knocked him out cold in under two seconds.” He turned to Curran. The Beast Lord shrugged. “It’s not my fault that he didn’t know how to fall.” Jim’s gaze slid from Curran to Dali. “What the hell was that?” “Crimson Jaws of Death.” “And were you planning on letting me know that you can turn people’s elbows backwards?” “I told you I did curses.” “You said they don’t work!” “I said they don’t always work. This one worked apparently.” Dali wrinkled her forehead. “It’s not like I ever get to use them against live opponents anyway. It was an accident.” Jim looked at us. The clipboard snapped in his hands. He turned around and very deliberately walked away. “I think we hurt his feelings.” Dali looked at his retreating back, sighed, and went after him. Curran looked at me. “What the hell was I supposed to do, catch the werebison as he was falling?

Jenna had tried to cheer me up that morning, saying, "At least you have it with a hot guy." "Archer isn't hot anymore," I'd fired back. "He tried to kill me, and his girlfriend is Satan." But I have to admit that as we stood beside each other on the cellar steps and listened to the Vandy ramble on about what we were supposed to do down there, I couldn't help but sneak sideways glances at him and notice that, homicidal tendencies and evil girlfriends aside, he was still hot. As usual,his tie was loose and his shirt-sleeves were rolled up. He was watching the Vandy with this bored, vaguely amused look, arms crossed over his chest. That pose did most excellent things for his chest and arms.How unfair was it that Elodie of all people got that as a boyfriend? I mean, where is the justice when-" "Miss Mercer!" the Vandy barked, and I jumped high enough to nearly lose my balance. I clutched the banister next to me, and Archer caught my other elbow. Then he winked, and I immediately turned my attention back to the Vandy like she was the most fascinating person I'd ever seen. "Do you need me to repeat anything, Miss Mercer?" she sneered. "N-no. I got it," I stammered. She stared at me for a minute. I think she was trying to come up with a witty put-down.But the Vandy,like most mean people, was dumb, so in the end, she just sort of growled and pushed between me and Archer to stalk up the stairs. "One hour!" she called over her shoulder. The ancient door didn't so much as creak as scream in pain as she pushed it closed.

Then, unprompted, Henry says into the stretching stillness, “Return of the Jedi.” A beat. “What?” “To answer your question,” Henry says. “Yes, I do like Star Wars, and my favorite is Return of the Jedi.” “Oh,” Alex says. “Wow, you’re wrong.” Henry huffs out the tiniest, most poshly indignant puff of air. It smells minty. Alex resists the urge to throw another elbow. “How can I be wrong about my own favorite? It’s a personal truth.” “It’s a personal truth that is wrong and bad.” “Which do you prefer, then? Please show me the error of my ways.” “Okay, Empire.” Henry sniffs. “So dark, though.” “Yeah, which is what makes it good,” Alex says. “It’s the most thematically complex. It’s got the Han and Leia kiss in it, you meet Yoda, Han is at the top of his game, fucking Lando Calrissian, and the best twist in cinematic history. What does Jedi have? Fuckin’ Ewoks.” “Ewoks are iconic.” “Ewoks are stupid.” “But Endor.” “But Hoth. There’s a reason people always call the best, grittiest installment of a trilogy the Empire of the series.” “And I can appreciate that. But isn’t there something to be valued in a happy ending as well?” “Spoken like a true Prince Charming.” “I’m only saying, I like the resolution of Jedi. It ties everything up nicely. And the overall theme you’re intended to take away from the films is hope and love and … er, you know, all that. Which is what Jedi leaves you with a sense of most of all.

All round there was a rising tide of beer, widow Désir's barrels had all been broached, beer had rounded all paunches and was overflowing in all directions, from noses, eyes - and elsewhere. People were so blown out and higgledy-piggledy, that everybody's elbows or knees were sticking into his neighbour and everybody thought it great fun to feel his neighbour's elbows. All mouths were grinning from ear to ear in continuous laughter.

Greetings from sunny Seattle, where women are “gals,” people are “folks,” a little bit is a “skosh,” if you’re tired you’re “logy,” if something is slightly off it’s “hinky,” you can’t sit Indian-style but you can sit “crisscross applesauce,” when the sun comes out it’s never called “sun” but always “sunshine,” boyfriends and girlfriends are “partners,” nobody swears but someone occasionally might “drop the f-bomb,” you’re allowed to cough but only into your elbow, and any request, reasonable or unreasonable, is met with “no worries.” Have I mentioned how much I hate it here?

Therese was propped up on one elbow. The milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a melange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo. It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will transform, or the unsuspecting warrior the cup that will kill, Then Carol came and took the cup, and Therese was drowsily aware that Carol asked her three questions, on that had to do with happiness, one about the store and one about the future. Therese heard herself answering. She heard her voice rise suddenly in a babble, like a spring that she had no control over, and she realized she was in tears. She was telling Carol all that she feared and disliked, of her loneliness, of Richard, and of gigantic disappointments.

So I would die in here. I’d leave my little life. I’d barely worn it out. Life had been a suit I’d only put on for special occasions. Most of the time I kept it in the back of my closest, forgetting it was there. We were meant to die when it was barely stitched anymore, when the elbows and knees were stained with grass and mud, shoulder pads uneven from people hugging you all the time, downpours and blistering sun, the fabric faded, buttons gone.

Why no," he said, reasonably, and looked at his watch, "we can wait another hour if you like. We can become friends then. Or we can wait until closing time. We can become friends then. Or we can wait until tomorrow, only that means that you must come in here tomorrow and perhaps you have something else to do." He put his watch away and leaned both elbows on the bar. "Tell me," he said, "what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?

What if one were up there, drifting about among suns and feeling the tails of comets fan one's forehead! How small the earth was and how puny the people; a Norway of two million provincial souls and a mortgage bank to help feed them! What was life worth at such a rate? You elbowed yourself ahead in the sweat of your face for a few mortal years, only to perish all the same, all the same!

The principals are quite simple. We can love people who treat us well. We cannot love people who treat us badly because, treating someone badly is not a virtue and we can only love virtue. I don’t think that’s controversial. I mean, there is no marriage therapist that I can imagine in the world who would say to a woman being beaten, humiliated, verbally abused, or completely ignored by her husband, “You just need to love him more. You need to work at making him happier.” That would be sadistic in the extreme to say to someone. So, in the same way I say, if anyone, I don’t care if they are your priest, god, father, mother, or your Siamese twin cousin coming out of your elbow or ass. I don’t care. If someone is treating you badly, that is not good for you. The solution is not you being so great that you both become better. That’s not a realistic solution.

They looked at each other in open hostility—she, leaning on her elbow in a flurry of frills and lace; he, sitting side-saddle on the edge of the bed. He was thinking ‘Who’s she to talk of any wrinkles I may have one day?’ and she ‘Why is he so ugly when he laughs?—he who’s the very picture of beauty!’ She thought for a moment, then finished aloud: “It’s because you look so ill-natured when you’re joking. You never laugh except unkindly—ᴀᴛ people, and that makes you ugly. You’re often ugly.

In these days of physical fitness, hair dye, and plastic surgery, you can live much of your life without feeling or even looking old. But then one day, your knee goes, or your shoulder, or your back, or your hip. Your hot flashes come to an end; things droop. Spots appear. Your cleavage looks like a peach pit. If your elbows faced forward, you would kill yourself. You’re two inches shorter than you used to be. You’re ten pounds fatter and you cannot lose a pound of it to save your soul. Your hands don’t work as well as they once did and you can’t open bottles, jars, wrappers, and especially those gadgets that are encased tightly in what seems to be molded Mylar. If you were stranded on a desert island and your food were sealed in plastic packaging, you would starve to death. You take so many pills in the morning you don’t have room for breakfast. You lose close friends and discover one of the worst truths of old age: they’re irreplaceable. People who run four miles a day and eat only nuts and berries drop dead. People who drink a quart of whiskey and smoke two packs of cigarettes a day drop dead. You are suddenly in a lottery, the ultimate game of chance, and someday your luck will run out. Everybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God.

The real reason that language so often carries magic is because humans have trouble not ascribing special power to it. Language makes so many things happen. If we say or write words in a certain way, we can make people see things that aren’t there and feel things they have no reason to feel—all this with mere mouth sounds or paper marks.

Mornings at 300 Fox Way were fearful, jumbled things. Elbows in sides and lines for the bathroom and people snapping over tea bags placed into cups that already had tea bags in them. There was school for Blue and work for some of the more productive (or less intuitive) aunts. Toast got burned, cereal went soggy, the refrigerator door hung open and expectant for minutes at a time. Keys jingled as car pools were hastily decided.

Wolsey sits with his elbows on his desk, his fingers dabbing his closed lids. He takes a great breath, and begins to talk: he begins to talk about England. You can’t know Albion, he says, unless you can go back before Albion was thought of. You must go back before Caesar’s legions, to the days when the bones of giant animals and men lay on the ground where one day London would be built. You must go back to the New Troy, the New Jerusalem, and the sins and crimes of the kings who rode under the tattered banners of Arthur and who married women who came out of the sea or hatched out of eggs, women with scales and fins and feathers; beside which, he says, the match with Anne looks less unusual. These are old stories, he says, but some people, let us remember, do believe them.

Most people don't know their ass from their elbow.

women were almost entirely overlooked as people, which gave her the power of invisibility. People saw women, they saw the dresses women wore on public walks through the park, and the gloved hands they rested on their suitors’ elbows at the theater, but women were never threats.

Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm,

John—my brother—was a homosexual,” Elizabeth said. “Oh,” he said, as if now he understood. “I’m sorry.” She propped herself up on one elbow and peered at him in the darkness. “What is that supposed to mean?” she shot back. “Well, but—how did you know? Surely he didn’t tell you he was.” “I’m a scientist, Calvin, remember? I knew. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality; it’s completely normal—a basic fact of human biology. I have no idea why people don’t know this. Does no one read Margaret Mead anymore? The point is, I knew John was a homosexual, and he knew I knew. We talked about it. He didn’t choose it; it was simply part of who he was. The best part was,” she said wistfully, “he knew about me, too.” “Knew you were—” “A scientist!” Elizabeth snapped.

Old Sobriety's son? How is the old devil?" "Dunno, sir, what with him being dead." "Oh dear. How long ago?" "These past thirty years," said Shawn. "But you don't look any older than twen-" Ponder began. Ridcully elbowed him sharply in the ribcage. "This is the countryside," he hissed. "People do things differently here. And more often.

What are you terrible at?" I asked, running my hand across his starched shirt. Encouraged by the touch, Maxon drew circles on my shoulder with the hand he had wrapped behind my back. "Why would you want to know that?" He asked in mock irritation. "Becaue I still know so little about you. And you seem perfect all the time.It's nice to have proof you aren't. He propped himself up on an elbow, focusing on my face. "You know I'm not." "Pretty close,' I countered. Little flickers of touch ran betwen us. Knees, arms, fingers. He shook his head, a small smile on his face. "Okay then. I can't plan wars. I'm rotten at it. And I'm guessing I'd be a terrible cook. I've never tried, so-" "Never?" "You might have noticed the teams of people keeping you up to your neck in pastries? They happen to feed me as well.

No need to be embarassed. After seeing you in my cousin's nightgown, you've got nothing to hide. But why were you crying in the shower?" he murmured into her hair. She could feel his lips moving against her scalp, and feel the press of his hips through the covers, but his arms were an unyielding cage. She tried to turn over to face him, to welcome him under the covers with her, but he wouldn't let her. "I was crying because I'm frustrated! Why are you doing this?" she whispered into her pillow. "We can't, Helen," was all he said. He kissed her neck and said he was sorry over and over, but try as she might, he wouldn't let her face him. She began to feel like she was being used. "Please be patient," he begged as he stopped her hand from reaching back to touch him. She tried to sit up, to push him out of her bed, anything but suffer lying next to someone who would play with her so terribly. They wrestled a bit, but he was much better at it than she was and felt even heavier than he looked. He easily blocked every attempt she made to wrap her arms or legs or lips around him. "Do you want me at all, or do you just think it's fun to tease me like this?" she asked, feeling rejected and humiliated. "Won't you even kiss me?" She finally struggled onto her back where she could at least see his face. "If I kiss you, I won't stop," he said in a desperate whisper as he propped himself up on his elbows to look her in the eye. She looked back at him, really seeing him for the first time that night. His expression was vulnerable and uncertain. His mouth was swollen with want. His body was shaking and there was a fine layer of anxious sweat wilting his clothes. Helen relaxed back into the bed with a sigh. For some reason that obviously had nothing to do with desire, he wouldn't allow himself to be with her. "You're not laughing at me, are you?" she asked warily, just as a precaution. "No. There's nothing funny about this," he answered. He shifted himself off her and lay back down alongside her, still breathing hard. "But for some reason, you and I will never happen," she said, feeling calm. "Never say never," he said urgently, rolling back on top of her and using all of his unusually heavy mass to press her deep into the cocoon of her little-girl bed. "The gods love to toy with people who use absolutes." Lucas ran his lips around her throat and let her put her arms around him, but that was all.

She sat for a moment, feeling the rhythmic rattle of the train’s motion. “Does it ever bother you to be in his shadow, Wayne?” “Who? Wax? I mean, he’s been putting on weight, but he’s not that fat yet, is he?” He grinned, though that faded when she didn’t smile back. And, in an uncharacteristic moment of solemnity, he slid his boots off the table and rested one elbow on it instead, leaning toward her. “Nah,” he said after some thought. “Nah, it doesn’t. But I don’t care much if people look at me or not. Sometimes my life is easier if they ain’t looking at me, ya know? I like listening.

Ah, my dear, when big and little men come to be measured rightly, and great and small actions to be weighed properly, and people to be stripped of their royal robes, beggars' rags, generals' uniforms, seedy out-at-elbowed coats, and the like—or the contrary say, when souls come to be stripped of their wicked deceiving bodies, and turned out stark naked as they were before they were born—what a strange startling sight shall we see, and what a pretty figure shall some of us cut!

You’re the smartest girl I know. You can’t help knowing everything and being constantly brilliant—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” I kissed her lips again, but after several moments, she pulled back slightly. “Hey,” she murmured. “There are people in the house.” “There are always people in the house,” I reminded her. “That’s why we escaped up here to the castle tower. Escape plan number . . . hell, I don’t know. I lost count. We haven’t had to come up with some dreamy escape plan in a while.” Sydney trailed her fingers down the side of my face. “That’s because we’re living it, Adrian. This is the only escape plan we need.” “Are you sure?” I asked, propping myself up on one elbow. I tried to put on a thoughtful, speculative expression. “Because there are things that could be tweaked. Like a bigger house. Or maybe—” “Adrian,” she interrupted. “Didn’t you just say I’m brilliant and know everything? Then trust me on this.” “Always,” I said, letting her pull me back down to her. “Always.

I can count on one hand the number of people I trust—and Simon Barrister, 4th Earl of Ellington, is one of them. He greets me with a back-smacking hug and a glowing smile. And when I say glowing, I mean literally—his face is bright tomato red, and crispy around the edges. “What the hell happened to your face?” “Damn Caribbean sun hates me. No matter how much sunscreen I used, it found a way to fry me like a chip!” He elbows me. “Made for a creative honeymoon, if you know what I mean. Burn ointment can be quite sensual.

And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?” “I think so.” Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.” “Snap ending.” Mildred nodded. “Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume.

The en­emy doesn't want us to plan, to organize, to nationalize our economy; the enemy fights with all its might against it. Why? Be­cause it is precisely through the capitalist anarchy of production that they exploit working people. That is how they make everyone develop a dog-eat-dog mentality, where each one struggles on his own, elbowing each other, kicking each other, knocking heads; each person trying to get ahead of everyone else, failing to realize that if we got organized and united we would be a tremendous force and could go much further, to the benefit of everyone.

You just hung up on my boss,” I said. “He was talking in circles. He’ll get over it.” “You know what your problem is? ‘You’ as in Primes, in general?” “I think you’re about to tell me.” Mad Rogan leaned forward with rapt attention. “Your problem is that nobody ever tells you no. You think you can do whatever you want, enter wherever you want . . .” “Seduce whoever we want.” He grinned, a wicked, wolfish smile. Oh no, we are not veering off the highway onto that road. “You play with people’s lives. When cops show up, you wave your hand and make them go away. Because you are Primes and the rest of us are, apparently, nothing.” “Mhm,” he said. “The irony of this is so rich, it’s simply delicious.” “I don’t see what’s so ironic about it.” “I’d tell you, but it would ruin the fun.” “Could you be more smug?” He leaned on his elbow. “Possibly. I see you liked the flowers.” I got a sudden urge to set the carnations on fire. “They are gorgeous. It’s not their fault you brought them.

The managers and superintendents and clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never from the workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A poor devil of a bookkeeper who had been working in Durham's for twenty years at a salary of six dollars a week, and might work there for twenty more and do no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman, as far removed as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing beds; he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town, and come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.

I mean to say, millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine-fish or a glass jar of seeds from Western Australia - but not Bertram. No; if you will take the word of one who would not deceive you, not Bertram. By the time we had tottered out of the Gold Coast village and were working towards the Palace of Machinery, everything pointed to my shortly executing a quiet sneak in the direction of that rather jolly Planters' Bar in the West Indian section. ... There are certain moments in life when words are not needed. I looked at Biffy, Biffy looked at me. A perfect understanding linked our two souls. "?" "!" Three minutes later we had joined the Planters. I have never been in the West Indies, but I am in a position to state that in certain of the fundamentals of life they are streets ahead of our European civilisation. The man behind the counter, as kindly a bloke as I ever wish to meet, seemed to guess our requirements the moment we hove in view. Scarcely had our elbows touched the wood before he was leaping to and fro, bringing down a new bottle with each leap. A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the day his father's life was saved at Wembley.

A pale, bored woman in white ankle-socks and a white tasselled beret was sitting on a bentwood chair at the corner entrance to the verandah of the writer's club, where there was an opening in the creeper-grown trellis. In front of her on a plain kitchen table lay a large book like a ledger, in which for no known reason the woman wrote the names of the people entering the restaurant. She stopped Koroviev and Behemoth. 'Your membership cards?' she said, staring in surprise at Koroviev's pince-nez, at Behemoth's Primus and grazed elbow. 'A thousand apologies, madam, but what membership cards?' asked Koroviev in astonishment. 'Are you writers?' asked the woman in return. 'Indubitably,' replied Koroviev with dignity. 'Where are your membership cards?' the woman repeated. 'Dear lady...' Koroviev began tenderly. 'I'm not a dear lady,' interrupted the woman. 'Oh, what a shame,' said Koroviev in a disappointed voice and went on: 'Well, if you don't want to be a dear lady, which would have been delightful, you have every right not to be. But look here - if you wanted to make sure that Dostoyevsky was a writer, would you really ask him for his membership card? Why, you only have to take any five pages of one of his novels and you won't need a membership card to convince you that the man's a writer. I don't suppose he ever had a membership card, anyway! What do you think?' said Koroviev, turning to Behemoth. 'I'll bet he never had one,' replied the cat, putting the Primus on the table and wiping the sweat from its brow with its paw. 'You're not Dostoyevsky,' said the woman to Koroviev. 'How do you know?' 'Dostoyevsky's dead,' said the woman, though not very confidently. 'I protest!' exclaimed Behemoth warmly. 'Dostoyevsky is immortal!' 'Your membership cards, please,' said the woman.

Coriolanus moved back to his seat - she knew where to find him now - to listen and to savor their actual reunion, which was only a song away. His eyes teared up when she began the song from the zoo. "Down in the valley, valley so low, Late in the evening, hear the train blow. The train, love, hear the train blow. Late in the evening, hear the train blow." Coriolanus felt an elbow nudge his ribs and looked over to see Sejanus beaming at him. It was nice, after all, to have someone else who knew the significance of the song. Someone who knew what they'd been through. "Go build me a mansion, build it so high, So I can see my true love go by. See him go by, love, see him go by. So I can see my true love go by." That's me, Coriolanus wanted to tell people around him. I'm her true love. And I saved her life. "Go write me a letter, send it by mail. Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail. Capitol jail, love, to the Capitol jail. Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail." Should he say hello first? Or just kiss her? "Roses are red, love; violets are blue. Birds in the heavens know I love you." Kiss her. Definitely, just kiss her. "Know I love you, oh, know I love you, Birds in the heavens know I love you. "Good night, everybody. Hope we see you next week, and until then, keep singing your song," said Lucy Gray, and the whole Covey took one final blow.

I suppose I could spend time theorizing how it is that people are not bad to each other, but that's really not the point. The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what's too high, or what's been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. That alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it's always a lie that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always.

I reckon you must get bored more easily than other people.” He came up onto one elbow and looked at her. “Yes. You’ll have your hands full, keeping me excited.” “I don’t remember anything about that in the marriage vows,” she said. “There was obey—I noticed that came first—but I privately added a lengthy footnote to that item.” “This surprises me not at all. But there was the part about serving me.” “It, too, needed a footnote. Then love and honor and keeping you and sticking with you and nobody else. I remember all those. But I don’t recall the minister mentioning anything about keeping you excited.” “That was the serve part. It had an asterisk and some fine print.” “I did not hear any fine print.

I've always thought of myself as a realist. I can remember fighting with my professors about it in grad school. The world that I live in consists of 250 advertisements a day and any number of unbelievably entertaining options, most of which are subsidized by corporations that want to sell me things. The whole way that the world acts on my nerve endings is bound up with stuff that the guys with the leather patches on their elbows would consider pop or trivial or ephemeral. I use a fair amount of pop stuff in my fiction, but what I mean by it is nothing different than what other people mean in writing about trees and parks and having to walk to the river to get water 100 years ago. It's just the texture of the world I live in.

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.

A man selling Vaseline Petroleum Jelly had gone around a number of houses in town a week before and had left some samples, asking people to see if they could find an ingenious use for it. Now he went around to the same houses, asking what uses they had found for Vaseline. The man in the first house, a wealthy city gent, said, "I used it for medicinal purposes. Whenever my children scraped their elbows or knees, I would rub it on." The man in the second house said, "I used it for mechanical purposes, such as greasing the bearings of my bicycles and lawnmower." The man in the third house, a scruffy, unshaven, working class fellow, said, "I used it for sexual purposes." In a shocked voice the salesman asked, "What do you mean?" "Well," said the scruffy man, "I put a whole lot of it on the handle of my bedroom door to keep the kids out!" You can give the same thing to different people and they will come out with different uses, according to their own unconsciousness. But if they are conscious, they will find only one use.

According to St. Augustine, the left hand represented the temporal, the mortal, and the bodily, as opposed to the right, which stood for “God, eternity, the years of God which fail not.”25 For centuries the preference for the right hand over the left governed how people fished, ploughed fields, twisted rope, and ate their meals. The Greeks and Romans, for example, always reclined on the left side, propped on the left elbow, leaving the right hand free for the business of eating and drinking. Plutarch noted that parents taught children to eat right-handed from a young age, and “if they do put forth the left hand, at once we correct them.”26 The prejudice against the left hand persisted during the Renaissance, with parents freeing a child’s right hand from its swaddling clothes to ensure right-handedness at the dinner table as well as at the writing desk.

Dave and Serge...played the Fiddler's Elbow as if it were Giants Stadium, and even though it was acoustic, they just about blew the place up. They were standing on chairs adn lying on the floor, they were funny, they charmed everyone in the pub apart from an old drunk ditting next to the drum kit...who put his fingers firmly in his ears during Serge's extended harmonica solo. It was utterly bizarre and very moving: most musicians wouldn't have bothered turning up, let alone almost killing themselves. And I was reminded...how rarely one feels included in a live show. Usually you watch, and listen, and drift off, and the band plays well or doesn't and it doesn't matter much either way. It can actually be a very lonely experience. But I felt a part of the music, and a part of the people I'd gone with, and, to cut this short before the encores, I didn't want to read for about a fortnight afterward. I wanted to write, but I didn't want to read no book. I was too itchy, too energized, and if young people feel like that every night of the week, then, yes, literature 's dead as a dodo. (Nick's thoughts after seeing Marah at a little pub called Fiddler's Elbow.)

Simple remedies for dire situations, that’s the lesson. In a falling elevator, try to climb up on the person nearby so their body will cushion your landing. Or in a crowded theater when everybody’s hightailing it for the fire exit, stick your elbows hard into the ribs of your neighbors to wedge yourself in, then pick up your feet so you won’t get trampled. That is how people frequently lose their lives in a riot: somebody steps on your heel, then walks right up till you’re flat and they’re standing on you. That’s what you get for trying to stand on your own two feet—you end up getting crushed! So that’s my advice. Let others do the pushing and shoving, and you just ride along. In the end, the neck you save will be your own. Perhaps I sound un-Christian, but let’s face it, when I step outside my own little world at night and listen to the sounds out there in the dark, what I feel down in my bones is that this is not a Christian kind of place. This is darkest Africa, where life roars by you like a flood and you grab whatever looks like it will hold you up. If you ask me, that’s how it is and ever shall be. You stick out your elbows, and hold yourself up.

Oh, she had been some kind of fine-looking, all right, with that dynamite body and that gorgeous fall of red wavy hair. But she was weak . . . weak somehow. It was as if she was sending out radio signals which only he could receive. You could point to certain things—how much she smoked (but he had almost cured her of that), the restless way her eyes moved, never quite meeting the eyes of whoever was talking to her, only touching them from time to time and then leaping nimbly away; her habit of lightly rubbing her elbows when she was nervous; the look of her fingernails, which were kept neat but brutally short. Tom noticed this latter the first time he met her. She picked up her glass of white wine, he saw her nails, and thought: She keeps them short like that because she bites them. Lions may not think, at least not the way people think . . . but they see. And when antelopes start away from a waterhole, alerted by that dusty-rug scent of approaching death, the cats can observe which one falls to the rear of the pack, maybe because it has a lame leg, maybe because it is just naturally slower . . . or maybe because its sense of danger is less developed. And it might even be possible that

These days, there are so few pure country people left on the concession roads that we may be in need of a new category of membership, much as sons and daughters of veterans are now allowed to join the Legion. A few simple questions could be asked, a small fee paid and (assuming that the answers are correct) you could be granted the status of an "almost local." Here are some of the questions you might be asked: Do you have just one suit for weddings and funerals? Do you save plastic buckets? Do you leave your car doors unlocked at all times? Do you have an inside dog and an outside dog? Has your outside dog never been to town? When you pass a neighbour in the car, do you wave from the elbow or do you merely raise one finger from the steering wheel? Do you have trouble keeping the car or truck going in a straight line because you are looking at crops or livestock? Do you sometimes find yourself sitting in the car in the middle of a dirt road chatting with a neighbour out the window while other cars take the ditch to get around you? Can you tell whose tractor is going by without looking out the window? Can people recognize you from three hundred yards away by the way you walk or the tilt of your hat? If somebody honks their horn at you, do you automatically smile and wave? Do most of your conversations open with some observation about the weather? Is your most important news source the store in the village? Have you had surgery in the local hospital? If you hear about a death or a fire in the community, does the woman in your house immediately start making sandwiches or a cake? Do you sometimes find yourself referring to a farm in the neighbourhood by the name of someone who owned it more than twenty-five years ago? If you answered yes to all of the above questions, consider it official: you are a local.

Lia eyed me. She eyed Michael. She eyed Dean. “Honestly,” she said, “I doubt that anyone is as happy as Cassie is at this exact moment.” I was getting better at ignoring Lia’s suggestive little digs, but this one hit its target, dead center. Squished in between Michael and Dean, I blushed. I was not going to go there—and I wasn’t going to let Lia ruin this. A grim expression on his face, Dean stood and marched toward Lia. For a moment, I thought he might say something to her about spoiling the moment, but he didn’t. He just picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. “Hey!” Lia protested. Dean grinned and threw her onto the sofa with Michael and me and then resumed his perch on the edge of the couch like nothing had happened. Lia scowled, and Michael poked her cheek. “Admit it,” he said again. “You’re just as happy as we are.” Lia tossed her hair over her shoulder and stared straight ahead, refusing to look any of us in the eye. “A little girl is going home,” she said. “Because of us. Of course I’m as happy as you are.” “Given individual differences in serotonin levels, the probability that any four people would be experiencing identical levels of happiness simultaneously is quite—” “Sloane,” Michael said, without bothering to turn around. “If you don’t finish that sentence, there’s a cup of fresh ground coffee in your future.” “My immediate future?” Sloane asked suspiciously. Michael had a long history of blocking her consumption of caffeine. Without a word, Michael, Lia, and I all turned to look at Dean. He got the message, stood up, and strode toward Sloane, giving her the exact same treatment he’d given Lia. When Dean tossed Sloane gently on top of me, I giggled and almost toppled onto the floor, but Lia grabbed hold of my collar. We did it, I thought, as Michael, Lia, Sloane, and I elbowed for room and Dean stared on from his position, just outside the fray.

I did it," she said. "Yup." "You made fun of me when i first got here," she said. "But I did it." "I was being friendly." "You were being a dick," she said. "Why do you think we like each other?" Stevie asked. "Does it matter?" "I don't know," she said. "I don't know how these things work." "Neither do I. Neither does anybody." "Some people seem to. I thin Janelle does." "Janelle," he said, "may know everything, but she doesn't know that. And I like you because . . ." He rolled up to his side and onto one elbow, gazing down into her face. He traced her jawline with one finger, sending such shivers down her body that she struggled not to squirm. ". . because you came to do something impossible and you did it. And you're smart. And you're really, really attractive." There, on the floor that had been scuffed by a thousand dance shoes, under the eyes of the masks on the wall that had seen decades go by, they kissed, over and over, each one renewing the last.

FUCK There are people who will tell you that using the word fuck in a poem indicates a serious lapse of taste, or imagination, or both. It’s vulgar, indecorous, an obscenity that crashes down like an anvil falling through a skylight to land on a restaurant table, on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs. But if you were sitting over coffee when the metal hit your saucer like a missile, wouldn’t that be the first thing you’d say? Wouldn’t you leap back shouting, or at least thinking it, over and over, bell-note riotously clanging in the church of your brain while the solicitous waiter led you away, wouldn’t you prop your shaking elbows on the bar and order your first drink in months, telling yourself you were lucky to be alive? And if you wouldn’t say anything but Mercy or Oh my or Land sakes, well then I don’t want to know you anyway and I don’t give a fuck what you think of my poem. The world is divided into those whose opinions matter and those who will never have a clue, and if you knew which one you were I could talk to you, and tell you that sometimes there’s only one word that means what you need it to mean, the way there’s only one person when you first fall in love, or one infant’s cry that calls forth the burning milk, one name that you pray to when prayer is what’s left to you. I’m saying in the beginning was the word and it was good, it meant one human entering another and it’s still what I love, the word made flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one whose lovely body I want close, and as we fuck I know it’s holy, a psalm, a hymn, a hammer ringing down on an anvil, forging a whole new world.

What the hell?" Arriane picked herself up off the ground. "Did we step through to California without my knowledge? No one told me there were fault lines in Georgia!" Cam pulled a long shard of glass from his forearm. Luce gasped as bright red blood trailed down his elbow, but his face showed no sign that he was in pain. "That wasn't an earthquake. That was a seismic shift in time." "A what?" Luce asked. "The first of many." Daniel looked out the jagged window, watching a white cumulus cloud roll across the now blue sky. "The closer Lucifer gets, the stronger they'll become." He glanced at Cam, who nodded. "Ticktock, people," Cam said. "Time is running out. We need to fly.

I hurried over to Conrad, walking so fast I kicked up sand behind me. “Hey, I’m gonna get a ride,” I said breathlessly. The blond Red Sox girl looked me up and down. “Hello,” she said. Conrad said, “With who?” I pointed at Cam. “Him.” “You’re not riding with someone you don’t even know,” he said flatly. “I do so know him. He’s Sextus.” He narrowed his eyes. “Sex what?” “Never mind. His name is Cam, he’s studying whales, and you don’t get to decide who I ride home with. I was just letting you know, as a courtesy. I wasn’t asking for your permission.” I started to walk away, but he grabbed my elbow. “I don’t care what he’s studying. It’s not gonna happen,” he said casually, but his grip was tight. “If you want to go, I’ll take you.” I took a deep breath. I had to keep cool. I wasn’t going to let him goad me into being a baby, not in front of all these people. “No, thanks,” I said, trying to walk away again. But he didn’t let go. “I thought you already had a boyfriend?” His tone was mocking, and I knew he’d seen through my lie the night before. I wanted so badly to throw a handful of sand in his face. I tried to twist out of his grip. “Let go of me! That hurts!” He let go immediately, his face red. It didn’t really hurt, but I wanted to embarrass him the way he was embarrassing me. I said loudly, “I’d rather ride with a stranger than with someone who’s been drinking!” “I’ve had one beer,” he snapped. “I weigh a hundred and seventy-five pounds. Wait half an hour and I’ll take you. Stop being such a brat.” I could feel tears starting to spark my eyelids. I looked over my shoulder to see if Cam was watching. He was. “You’re an asshole,” I said. He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “And you’re a four-year-old.” As I walked away, I heard the girl ask, “Is she your girlfriend?” I whirled around, and we both said “No!” at the same time. Confused, she said, “Well, is she your little sister?” like I wasn’t standing right there. Her perfume was heavy. It felt like it filled all the air around us, like we were breathing her in. “No, I’m not his little sister.” I hated this girl for being a witness to all this. It was humiliating. And she was pretty, in the same kind of way Taylor was pretty, which somehow made things worse. Conrad said, “Her mom is best friends with my mom.” So that was all I was to him? His mom’s friend’s daughter? I took a deep breath, and without even thinking, I said to the girl, “I’ve known Conrad my whole life. So let me be the one to tell you you’re barking up the wrong tree. Conrad will never love anyone as much as he loves himself, if you know what I mean-“ I lifted up my hand and wiggled my fingers. “Shut up, Belly,” Conrad warned. The tops of his ears were turning bright red. It was a low blow, but I didn’t care. He deserved it. Red Sox girl frowned. “What is she talking about, Conrad?” To her I blurted out, “Oh, I’m sorry, do you not know what the idiom ‘barking up the wrong tree’ means?” Her pretty face twisted. “You little skank,” she hissed. I could feel myself shrinking. I wished I could take it back. I’d never gotten into a fight with a girl before, or with anyone for that matter. Thankfully, Conrad broke in then and pointed to the bonfire. “Belly, go back over there, and wait for me to come get you,” he said harshly. That’s when Jeremiah ambled over. “Hey, hey, what’s going on?” he asked, smiling in his easy, goofy way. “Your brother is a jerk,” I said. “That’s what’s going on.” Jeremiah put his arm around me. He smelled like beer. “You guys play nice, you hear?” I shrugged out of his hold and said, “I am playing nice. Tell your brother to play nice.” “Wait, are you guys brother and sister too?” the girl asked. Conrad said, “Don’t even think about leaving with that guy.

Your hair grows by itself, your heart beats by itself, and your breath happens pretty much by itself. Your glands secrete the essences by themselves and you do not have voluntary control over these things, and so we say they happen spontaneously. So, when you go to bed and try to go to sleep you interfere with the spontaneous process of going to sleep. If you try to breathe real hard you will find you get balled-up in your breathing. So if you are to be human, you just have to trust yourself to go to sleep, to digest your food, and to have bowel movements. Of course if something goes seriously wrong and you need a surgeon that is another matter, but by and large the healthy human being does not from the start of life need surgical interference. One lets it happen by itself, and so with the whole picture that is fundamental to it. You have to let go and let it happen, because if you don’t then you are constantly going to be trying to do what happens easily only if you do not try. When you think a bit about what people really want to do with their time, and you ask what they do when they are not being pushed around or somebody is telling them what to do, you find they like to make rhythms. They listen to music and they dance or they sing, or perhaps they do something of a rhythmic nature like playing cards, bowling, or raising their elbows. Given the chance, everybody wants to spend their time swinging.

FATHER FORGETS W. Livingston Larned Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders back!” Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive—and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped. You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs. Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding—this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years. And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed! It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy—a little boy!” I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

Such a nasty bruise,” he says, staring straight into my eyes. I am stunned he can see it. Delicate to the touch and tender on every side, the bruise is deeper than days. My hand automatically moves to my chest. Science taught me with valid assurance that my heart was fixed in my rib cage, but life has since shown me otherwise. My heart in fact dangles from a tangle of strings. The ends are grasped tight by numerous people who yank and release, having caused many painful bruises over time. I cry because they are invisible to most. “Such a nasty bruise,” he repeats, tugging on my poor heart. His kind eyes fall away from mine as I feel a squeeze on my arm. He twists it enough to show me a small, round patch of purple surrounded by a sickly yellowish corona. “Oh. My elbow.” I let the air exhale from my lungs. Another bruise forms where my heart has hit the floor. It is jerked up again. “Can I do anything for you?” I see in his eyes the mirror image of a finger—his finger—wrapped in one of the dangling strings. He tugs and I feel it. “No,” I reply to his question. But it is a lie. There is something he could do, along with all who grasp a portion of the web entangling my heart. I wish they would mercifully let go.

Wow,” Wesley said. We were lying in his bed only a few minutes after we’d finished, with a foot or more space between our bodies. “I definitely wasn’t expecting that.” God, he ruined everything when he talked. Annoyed, and still wading through the emotional repercussions, I sneered. “What? Ashamed that you screwed the Duff?” “No.” I was surprised by how serious he sounded. “I’m never ashamed of anyone I sleep with. Sex is a natural chemical reaction. It always happens for a reason. Who am I to dictate who experiences the joy of sharing my bed?” He didn’t see me roll my eyes as he continued. “No, I just meant that I’m shocked. I was honestly starting to believe that you hated me.” “I do hate you,” I assured him, kicking off the covers and moving to pick up my clothes. “You must not hate me too much,” Wesley said, rolling onto his elbow and watching me dress. “You did pretty much throw yourself at me. Generally, hatred doesn’t inspire that kind of passion.” I pulled on my T-shirt. “Believe me, Wesley, I definitely hate you. I was just using you. You use people all the time, so I’m sure you understand.” I buttoned my jeans and grabbed my alligator clip from the nightstand. “This was fun, but if you ever tell anyone, I swear I’ll castrate you.

Thanks for getting me out of there,” I murmur, lacing my fingers around my knees, and looking up at him on his step. “Yeah. You looked a little green. “ “I don’t handle crowds too well. I’ve always been that way, I guess.” “You might get in trouble,” he warns, staring at me in that strange, hungry way that unravels me. He strokes his bottom lip with a finger. For a flash of a second, his eyes look strange. Different. All glowing irises and thin dark pupils. Almost drake-like. I blink to clear my vision. His eyes are normal again. Just my imagination in overdrive. I’m probably projecting missing home and Az—everything--onto him. “Pep rallies are mandatory,” he continues. “A lot of people saw you leave. Teachers included.” “They saw you leave, too,” I point out. He leans to the side, propping an elbow on one of the steps behind him. “I’m not worried about that. I’ve been in trouble before.” He smiles a crooked grin and holds up crossed fingers. “The principal and I are like this. The guy loves me. Really.” Laughter spills from me, rusty and hoarse. His grin makes me feel good. Free. Like I’m not running from anything. Like I could stay here in this world, if only I have him. The thought unsettles me. Sinks heavily in my chest. Because I can’t have him. Not really. All he can ever be for me is a temporary fix. “But you’re worried I’ll get in trouble?” I try not to show how much this pleases me. I’ve managed to ignore him for days now and here I sit. Lapping up his attention like a neglected puppy. My voice takes on an edge. “Why do you care? I’ve ignored you for days.” His smile fades. He looks serious, mockingly so. “Yeah. You got to stop that.” I swallow back a laugh. “I can’t.” “Why?” There’s no humor in his eyes now, no mockery. “You like me. You want to be with me.” “I never said—” “You didn’t have to.” I inhale sharply. “Don’t do this.” He looks at me so fiercely, so intently. Angry again. “I don’t have friends. Do you see me hang with anyone besides my jerk cousins? That’s for a reason. I keep people away on purpose,” he growls. “But then you came along . . .” I frown and shake my head. His expression softens then , pulls at some part of me. His gaze travels my face, warming the core of me. “Whoever you are, Jacinda, you’re someone I have to let in.

Did you forgive her?" I looked at her with a start. Jack dropped his salad back in the bucket. "What?" "Did you forgive Nikki?" "Umm,Mary,I don't think you-" I started, but Jack interrupted me. "No,it's okay.What do you mean, Mary?" He spoke slowly. "Did I forgive Nikki for what?" Mary frowned and reached under the separation glass and touched Jack's gloved hand. "Did you forgive her for leaving you?" Jack's lower lip sank,and his eyebrows lifted.He looked like he was about to speak,but no words came out of his open mouth. Mary leaned even closer and whispered, "I have a theory. A theory about anchors." "Oh," Jack finally said,his forehead now creased with confusion. "Anchors." The people in line behind Mary shifted impatiently. "Um,Mary,you're holding up the line," I said. Mary looked at me as I continued. "Why don't you go grab a table,and I'll eat with you." The tension slipped from her face. "Okay. But hurry. My tee time's at one." She started down the line again.Jack's hand still rested in the lettuce, so I nudged him with my elbow, and he seemed to restart. "Don't worry about her," I said. "She gets confused easily." "That wasn't confusion." Jack kept his eyes on my face as he served the salad. "It was like she knew me. Knew us.Did you talk to her about us?" "Of course not.She also knows about anchors,apparently.And she's late for her tee time.None of it makes sense.

Even if you had no reason at all, fear isn’t foolish. I get frightened, too.” She remembered how he’d held his sword earlier. “You thought there were Valorians in the woods. You weren’t frightened then.” “Not exactly.” “Then what are you afraid of?” “Spiders,” he said gravely. She elbowed him. “Ow.” She snorted. “Spiders.” “Or those things with a thousand legs.” He shuddered. “Gods.” She laughed. Quietly, he said, “I was afraid when I came to the stable and saw that Javelin wasn’t in his stall.” Startled, she turned her head, catching a glimpse of the line of his jaw and the shadows of his throat. She returned her gaze to the road. Lightly, she said, “Worse than spiders?” “Ah, much worse.” “If I ran away, I wouldn’t get very far.” “In my experience, it’s a very bad idea to underestimate you.” “But you didn’t try to ride me down.” “No.” “You wanted to.” “Yes.” “What stopped you?” “Fear,” he said, “of what it would mean for me not to trust you. I saddled a horse. I was ready to ride…but I thought that if I did, I’d be nothing more than a different kind of prison to you.” His words made her feel strange. He changed his tone. There was mischief in it now. “Also, you’re a little intimidating.” “I am not.” “Oh, yes. I didn’t think you’d appreciate being followed. I’ve seen what happens to people who get on your bad side. And now you know my weakness, and will drop spiders down the back of my shirt if I cross you, and I’ll have a hard life indeed.

He wondered vaguely why he was like that. How did other people—people like Denniston or Dimble—find it so easy to saunter through the world with all their muscles relaxed and a careless eye roving the horizon, bubbling over with fancy and humor, sensitive to beauty, not continually on their guard and not needing to be? What was the secret of that fine, easy laughter which he could not by any efforts imitate? Everything about them was different. They could not even fling themselves into chairs without suggesting by the very posture of their limbs a certain lordliness, a leo-nine indolence. There was elbow room in their lives, as there had never been in his. They were Hearts: he was only a Spade. Still, he must be getting on. . . . Of course, Jane was a Heart. He must give her her freedom. It would be quite unjust to think that his love for her had been basely sensual. Love, Plato says, is the son of Want. Mark’s body knew better than his mind had known till recently, and even his sensual desires were the true index of something which he lacked and Jane had to give. When she first crossed the dry and dusty world which his mind inhabited she had been like a spring shower; in opening himself to it he had not been mistaken. He had gone wrong only in assuming that marriage, by itself, gave him either power or title to appropriate that freshness. As he now saw, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it. He rang the bell and asked for his bill.

Once upon a time there is nothing but darkness. You stumble around blindly, so close to the edge that you are sure you'll tumble over it. And if you are to be honest, you must admit that you are so low already you don't necessarily think that would be a bad thing. Then one day you meet someone. He finds you kneeling right at the precipice and instead of telling you to get back up he kneels next to you. He tries to see what you are seeing. He doesn't ask anything of you or beg you to snap out of it or remind you there are people who need you. He just waits until you turn and squint and think to yourself, "oh yes, I remember, this is what light looks like." You don't know how it happens, but you become friends. You find yourself looking in the parking lot to see if his car is there. You see something on tv or read it in a book and think, "I must remember to tell him." You learn how he takes his coffee and what his favorite color is, not by asking but by observation. Then you realize your day speeds up when you see him. The hair stands up on the backs of your forearms when his shoulder bumps yours in the elevator. His presence is so filling the absence of him aches. You begin to reconfigure the puzzle of your life with him in it. You don't want to spend time without him if you can help it. You introduce him to family. You suffer their elbow gabs and raised eyebrows, because later it gives you two something to laugh about. You wish you could introduce him to the family members who aren't here anymore. They would have loved him. You see him around children and you think one day.

I make my way back whistling. Gerry nods towards Mrs Brady who is standing beside the trolleys. Morning, Mrs Brady, I say cheerfully. I push her provisions out to the car. Things are something terrible, she says. You can't trust anybody. No. It's come to a sorry pass. It has. There's hormones in the beef and tranquillizers in the bacon. There's men with breasts and women with mickeys. All from eating meat. Now. I steer a path between a crowd of people while she keeps step alongside. Can you believe it - they're feeding the pigs Valium. If you boil a bit of bacon you have to lie down afterwards. Dear oh dear. Yes, I nod. The thought of food makes me ill. The pigs are getting depressed in those sheds. If they get depressed they lose weight. So they tranquillize them. Where will it end? I don't know, Mrs Brady, I say. I begin filling the boot. That's why I started buying lamb. Then along came Chernobyl. Now you can't even have lamb stew or you'll light up at night! I swear. And when they've left you with nothing safe to eat, next thing they come along and tell you you can't live in your own house. I haven't heard of that one, Mrs Brady. Listen to me. She took my elbow. It could all happen that you're in your own house and the next thing is there's radiation bubbling under the floorboards. What? It comes right at you through the foundations. Watch the yogurts. Did you hear of that? No. I saw it in the Champion. Did you not see it in the Champion? I might have. No wonder we're not right. I brought the lid of the boot down. She sits into the car very decorously and snaps her bag open on her lap. She winds down the window and gives me 50p for myself and £1 for the trolley.

What do you think is sexy?” said Nona, in her normal voice. Pyrrha seemed pleased to think about something different, and waited until the bubbles were getting really big before she took the spatula and slid it under a rising patty, flipping it over. Nona had come up by her elbow to watch. “Do you want to know what I really think is sexy, or what I’d tell someone if they asked and I wanted to impress them?” Nona was pleased Pyrrha understood. “The first one.” “Landmine people,” said Pyrrha, and when she saw Nona’s brows cross in confusion, she said: “Some people were put into the universe to rig it to explode, then walk away… I always fell for that.” Nona thought she got it, but was unsure on a few points. “But you can’t really tell that about someone when you first look at them.” “Oh, you can,” said Pyrrha. “You haven’t looked for it.” She flipped over another pikelet, looked grave and intelligent for a moment, and then said: “I mean, also redheads. Love a redhead.” Apart from Pyrrha, whose hair was a very deep dark russet, Honesty was the only redhead that Nona knew, and Honesty had big, pallid blue eyes that he could make float in different direction, when one wasn’t smushed. He also had skin like a horrible ghost’s. You could see all the veins in his eyelids. Nona said, “Okay. I don’t think redheads are sexy.” “What? Hang on,” said Camilla, opening the door—no, Palamedes, opening the door, busy buttoning himself into Camilla’s jacket—“That’s a very interesting thing you just said, Nona. Let me write that down. Is that pikelets Pyrrha? You’re a legend.” Nona wondered how Palamedes couldn’t see the hitch in Pyrrha’s shoulder, nor all the crinkles in her posture or her clothes that screamed PARK…PARK…PARK…, but took her moment. “Palamedes, what do you think is sexy?” “Those little outfits nurses wear,” said Palamedes promptly. So Camilla had been lying, after all.

They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself. 'Fine day,' he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss Grantly's elbow. 'We were driving to-day and we thought it rather cold,' said Griselda. 'Deuced cold,' said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white cravat and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not proceed to any other immediate conversational efforts; nor did Griselda. But he grouped himself again as became a marquis, and gave very intense satisfaction to Mrs. Proudie. 'This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,' said that lady, coming up to him and shaking his hand warmly; 'so very kind of you to come to my poor little tea-party.' 'Uncommonly pleasant, I call it,' said his lordship. 'I like this sort of thing--no trouble, you know.' 'No; that is the charm of it: isn't it? no trouble or fuss, or parade. That's what I always say. According to my ideas, society consists in giving people facility for an interchange of thoughts--what we call conversation.' 'Aw, yes, exactly.' 'Not in eating and drinking together--eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The world in this has surely made a great mistake.' 'I like a good dinner all the same,' said Lord Dumbello. 'Oh, yes, of course--of course. I am by no means one of those who would pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for our enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?' 'A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,' said Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation. 'An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating -- can we?' 'No,' said Lord Dumbello, 'not always.' And he looked as though he lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.

A late arrival had the impression of lots of loud people unnecessarily grouped within a smoke-blue space between two mirrors gorged with reflections. Because, I suppose, Cynthia wished to be the youngest in the room, the women she used to invite, married or single, were, at the best, in their precarious forties; some of them would bring from their homes, in dark taxis, intact vestiges of good looks, which, however, they lost as the party progressed. It has always amazed me - the capacity sociable weekend revelers have of finding almost at once, by a purely empiric but very precise method, a common denominator of drunkenness, to which everybody loyally sticks before descending, all together, to the next level. The rich friendliness of the matrons was marked by tomboyish overtones, while the fixed inward look of amiably tight men was like a sacrilegious parody of pregnancy. Although some of the guests were connected in one way or another with the arts, there was no inspired talk, no wreathed, elbow-propped heads, and of course no flute girls. From some vantage point where she had been sitting in a stranded mermaid pose on the pale carpet with one or two younger fellows, Cynthia, her face varnished with a film of beaming sweat, would creep up on her knees, a proffered plate of nuts in one hand, and crisply tap with the other the athletic leg of Cochran or Corcoran, an art dealer, ensconced, on a pearl-grey sofa, between two flushed, happily disintegrating ladies. At a further stage there would come spurts of more riotous gaiety. Corcoran or Coransky would grab Cynthia or some other wandering woman by the shoulder and lead her into a corner to confront her with a grinning imbroglio of private jokes and rumors, whereupon, with a laugh and a toss of her head, he would break away. And still later there would be flurries of intersexual chumminess, jocular reconciliations, a bare fleshy arm flung around another woman's husband (he standing very upright in the midst of a swaying room), or a sudden rush of flirtatious anger, of clumsy pursuit-and the quiet half smile of Bob Wheeler picking up glasses that grew like mushrooms in the shade of chairs. ("The Vane Sisters")

Okay.First things first. Three things you don't want me to know about you." "What?" I gaped at him. "You're the one who says we don't know each other.So let's cut to the chase." Oh,but this was too easy: 1. I am wearing my oldest, ugliest underwear. 2.I think your girlfriend is evil and should be destroyed. 3.I am a lying, larcenous creature who talks to dead people and thinks she should be your girlfriend once the aforementioned one is out of the picture. I figured that was just about everything. "I don't think so-" "Doesn't have to be embarrassing or major," Alex interrupted me, "but it has to be something that costs a little to share." When I opened my mouth to object again, he pointed a long finger at the center of my chest. "You opened the box,Pandora.So sit." There was a funny-shaped velour chair near my knees. I sat. The chair promptly molded itself to my butt. I assumed that meant it was expensive, and not dangerous. Alex flopped onto the bed,settling on his side with his elbow bent and his head propped on his hand. "Can't you go first?" I asked. "You opened the box..." "Okay,okay. I'm thinking." He gave me about thirty seconds. Then, "Time." I took a breath. "I'm on full scholarship to Willing." One thing Truth or Dare has taught me is that you can't be too proud and still expect to get anything valuable out of the process. "Next." "I'm terrified of a lot things, including lightning, driving a stick shift, and swimming in the ocean." His expression didn't change at all. He just took in my answers. "Last one." "I am not telling you about my underwear," I muttered. He laughed. "I am sorry to hear that. Not even the color?" I wanted to scowl. I couldn't. "No.But I will tell you that I like anchovies on my pizza." "That's supposed to be consolation for withholding lingeries info?" "Not my concern.But you tell me-is it something you would broadcast around the lunchroom?" "Probably not," he agreed. "Didn't think so." I settled back more deeply into my chair. It didn't escape my notice that, yet again, I was feeling very relaxed around this boy. Yet again, it didn't make me especially happy. "Your turn." I thought about my promise to Frankie. I quietly hoped Alex would tell me something to make me like him even a little less. He was ready. "I cried so much during my first time at camp that my parents had to come get me four days early." I never went to camp. It always seemed a little bit idyllic to me. "How old were you?" "Six.Why?" "Why?" I imagined a very small Alex in a Spider-Man shirt, cuddling the threadbare bunny now sitting on the shelf over his computer. I sighed. "Oh,no reason. Next." "I hated Titanic, The Notebook, and Twilight." "What did you think of Ten Things I Hate About You?" "Hey," he snapped. "I didn't ask questions during your turn." "No,you didn't," I agreed pleasantly. "Anser,please." "Fine.I liked Ten Things. Satisfied?" No,actually. "Alex," I said sadly, "either you are mind-bogglingly clueless about what I wouldn't want to know, or your next revelation is going to be that you have an unpleasant reaction to kryptonite." He was looking at me like I'd spoken Swahili. "What are you talking about?" Just call me Lois. I shook my head. "Never mind. Carry on." "I have been known to dance in front of the mirror-" he cringed a little- "to 'Thriller.'" And there it was. Alex now knew that I was a penniless coward with a penchant for stinky fish.I knew he was officially adorable. He pushed himself up off his elbow and swung his legs around until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. "And on that humiliating note, I will now make you translate bathroom words into French." He picked up a sheaf of papers from the floor. "I have these worksheets. They're great for the irregular verbs...

this reaction. This was on college campuses, exactly the kind of environment where I had expected curiosity, lively debate, and, yes, the thrill and energy of like-minded activists. Instead almost every campus audience I encountered bristled with anger and protest. I was accustomed to radical Muslim students from my experience as an activist and a politician in Holland. Any time I made a public speech, they would swarm to it in order to shout at me and rant in broken Dutch, in sentences so fractured you wondered how they qualified as students at all. On college campuses in the United States and Canada, by contrast, young and highly articulate people from the Muslim student associations would simply take over the debate. They would send e-mails of protest to the organizers beforehand, such as one (sent by a divinity student at Harvard) that protested that I did not “address anything of substance that actually affects Muslim women’s lives” and that I merely wanted to “trash” Islam. They would stick up posters and hand out pamphlets at the auditorium. Before I’d even stopped speaking they’d be lining up for the microphone, elbowing away all non-Muslims. They spoke in perfect English; they were mostly very well-mannered; and they appeared far better assimilated than their European immigrant counterparts. There were far fewer bearded young men in robes short enough to show their ankles, aping the tradition that says the Prophet’s companions dressed this way out of humility, and fewer girls in hideous black veils. In the United States a radical Muslim student might have a little goatee; a girl may wear a light, attractive headscarf. Their whole demeanor was far less threatening, but they were omnipresent. Some of them would begin by saying how sorry they were for all my terrible suffering, but they would then add that these so-called traumas of mine were aberrant, a “cultural thing,” nothing to do with Islam. In blaming Islam for the oppression of women, they said, I was vilifying them personally, as Muslims. I had failed to understand that Islam is a religion of peace, that the Prophet treated women very well. Several times I was informed that attacking Islam only serves the purpose of something called “colonial feminism,” which in itself was allegedly a pretext for the war on terror and the evil designs of the U.S. government. I was invited to one college to speak as part of a series of

So what's going on with you and your boyfriend?" Eli asked me right before he shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth during breakfast the next morning. I made a face in the direction of my plate before shooting a glance upward to find Gordo’s eyes on me, a smirk on his face. "Mason?" I asked, going back to my food. Eli made a gagging noise, elbowing me hard in the ribs. "I'm not gonna go into details on how disturbing it is that I say ‘your boyfriend’ and you automatically think of fucking Mase." "He's always calling me his wife, or telling people I don't know that we're getting married," I replied, elbowing him back as hard as he got me. It was partially the truth… but mostly, I didn’t want to talk about the man who had been kissing my shoulder hours ago. "I love Mase, but it'll be a sunny day in my asshole before you and him get together," he mumbled. I snorted, biting into my biscuit. "Who the heck else would you be talking about?" I asked, but I knew. Oh, I knew damn well he was referring to Sacha. Freaking Gordo snickered from across the table before putting his hands up in surrender when I glared at him. "I didn’t say anything." "Sacha, Flabby. Sacha. Your boyfriend. Your snuggle bug." Eliza finally answered. Suddenly the half-eaten biscuit on my plate needed to be eaten immediately. I shoved the entire piece into my mouth to avoid the conversation my brother was trying to edge into. I'd had talks about boys with Eli in the past, and they never ended—or started—well. "There's nothing going on between us. We're just friends." Because we were. Eli made a noise that sounded like “hmmph” deep in his throat. It was incredulous and disbelieving. Then he asked the question to prove it, his attention back on his band mate. "Gordo, do you think I'm blind?" Gordo shook his head. "Gaby, do you think I'm blind?" he asked. "Not blind, just dumb.” I smiled. He shot me a frown. A moment later, he threw his arm over my shoulders and started shoving his plate away with his free hand. "Flabby Gaby, that kid is in love with you." In love. With me? I leaned forward and tried to sniff his breath. “Are you still drunk?” But my brother kept talking before I could keep going. "Anyone with eyes and ears knows that guy thinks you shit out Lucky Charms." Gordo and I burst out laughing. "Is that a good thing?" I asked him. Eliza shoved my face away with his palm, ignoring my commentary again. "And I think that you love him, too." The noise that came out of my mouth sounded like a hybrid “moo” and squawk at the same time. "I—,” I slammed my mouth shut before opening it again with a sputter. “What?

I am an urchin, standing in the cold, elbowed aside by the glossy rich visitors in their fur coats and ostentatious jewellery, being fussed into the hotel by pompous-looking doormen. 'No problem. I'd better get home, actually Mr – Gustav. A drink is very tempting, but maybe not such a good idea after all.' I pat my pockets. 'And I'm skint.' 'Pavements not paved with gold yet, eh?' He moves on along the facade of the grand hotel to the corner, and waits. He's staring not back at me but down St James Street. I wage a little war with myself. He's a stranger, remember. The newspaper headlines, exaggerated by the time they reach the office of Jake's local rag: Country girl from the sticks raped and murdered in London by suave conman. Even Poppy would be wagging her metaphorical finger at me by now. Blaming herself for not being there, looking out for me. But we're out in public here. Lots of people around us. He's charming. He's incredibly attractive. He's got a lovely deep, well spoken voice. And he's an entrepreneur who must be bloody rich if he owns more than one house. What the hell else am I going to do with myself when everyone else is out having fun? One thing I won't tell him is that my pockets might be empty, but my bank account is full. 'One drink. Then I must get back.' He doesn't answer or protest, but with a courtly bow he crooks his elbow and escorts me down St James. We turn right and into the far more subtle splendour of Dukes Hotel. 'Dress code?' I ask nervously, wiping my feet obediently on the huge but welcoming doormat and drifting ahead of him into the smart interior where domed and glassed corridors lead here and there. The foyer smells of mulled wine and candles and entices you to succumb to its perfumed embrace.

Come inside with me,” he urged, increasing the pressure on her elbow, “and I’ll begin making it up to you.” Elizabeth let herself be drawn forward a few steps and hesitated. “This is a mistake. Everyone will see us and think we’ve started it all over again-“ “No, they won’t,” he promised. “There’s a rumor spreading like fire in there that I tried to get you in my clutches two years ago, but without a title to tempt you I didn’t have a chance. Since acquiring a title is a holy crusade for most of them, they’ll admire your sense. Now that I have a title, I’m expected to use it to try to succeed where I failed before-as a way of bolstering my wounded male pride.” Reaching up to brush a wisp of hair from her soft cheek, he said, “I’m sorry. It was the best I could do with what I had to work with-we were seen together in compromising circumstances. Since they’d never believe nothing happened, I could only make them think I was in pursuit and you were evading.” She flinched from his touch but didn’t shove his hand away. “You don’t understand. What’s happening to me in there is no less than I deserve. I knew what the rules were, and I broke them when I stayed with you at the cottage. You didn’t force me to stay. I broke the rules, and-“ “Elizabeth,” he interrupted in a voice edge with harsh remorse, “if you won’t do anything else for me, at least stop exonerating me for that weekend. I can’t bear it. I exerted more force on you than you understand.” Longing to kiss her, Ian had to be satisfied instead with trying to convince her his plan would work, because he now needed her help to ensure its success. In a teasing voice he said, “I think you’re underrating my gift for strategy and subtlety. Come and dance with me, and I’ll prove to you how easily most of the male minds in there have been manipulated.” Despite his confidence, moments after they entered the ballroom Ian noticed the increasing coldness of the looks being directed at them, and he knew a moment of real alarm-until he glanced at Elizabeth as he took her in his arms for a waltz and realized the cause of it. “Elizabeth,” he said in a low, urgent voice, gazing down at her bent head, “stop looking meek! Put your nose in the air and cut me dead or flirt with me, but do not on any account look humble, because these people will interpret it as guilt!” Elizabeth, who had been staring at his shoulder, as she'd done with her other dancing partners, tipped her head back and looked at him in confusion. "What?" Ian's heart turned over when the chandeliers overhead revealed the wounded look in her glorious green eyes. Realizing logic and lectures weren't going to help her give the performance he badly needed her to give, he tried the tack that had, in Scotland, made her stop crying and begin to laugh: He tried to tease her. Casting about for a subject, he said quickly, "Belhaven is certainly in fine looks tonight-pink satin pantaloons. I asked him for the name of his tailor so that I could order a pair for myself." Elizabeth looked at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses; then his warning about looking meek hit home, and she began to understand what he wanted her to do. That added to the comic image of Ian's tall, masculine frame in those absurd pink pantaloons enabled her to manage a weak smile. "I have greatly admired those pantaloons myself," she said. "Will you also order a yellow satin coat to complement the look?" He smiled. "I thought-puce." "An unusual combination," she averred softly, "but one that I am sure will make you the envy of all who behold you.

Okay, so I shouldn't have fucked with her on the introduction thing. Writing nothing except, Saturday night. You and me. Driving lessons and hot sex ... in her notebook probably wasn't the smartest move. But I was itching to make Little Miss Perfecta stumble in her introduction of me. And stumbling she is. "Miss Ellis?" I watch in amusement as Perfection herself looks up at Peterson. Oh, she's good. This partner of mine knows how to hide her true emotions, something I recognize because I do it all the time. "Yes?" Brittany says, tilting her head and smiling like a beauty queen. I wonder if that smile has ever gotten her out of a speeding ticket. "It's your turn. Introduce Alex to the class." I lean an elbow on the lab table, waiting for an introduction she has to either make up or fess up she knows less than crap about me. She glances at my comfortable position and I can tell from her deer-in-the-headlights look I've stumped her. "This is Alejandro Fuentes," she starts, her voice hitching the slightest bit. My temper flares at the mention of my given name, but I keep a cool facade as she continues with a made-up introduction. "When he wasn't hanging out on street corners and harassing innocent people this summer, he toured the inside of jails around the city, if you know what I mean. And he has a secret desire nobody would ever guess." The room suddenly becomes quiet. Even Peterson straightens to attention. Hell, even I'm listening like the words coming out of Brittany's lying, pink-frosted lips are gospel. "His secret desire," she continues, "is to go to college and become a chemistry teacher, like you, Mrs. Peterson." Yeah, right. I look over at my friend Isa, who seems amused that a white girl isn't afraid of giving me smack in front of the entire class. Brittany flashes me a triumphant smile, thinking she's won this round. Guess again, gringa. I sit up in my chair while the class remains silent. "This is Brittany Ellis," I say, all eyes now focused on me. "This summer she went to the mall, bought new clothes so she could expand her wardrobe, and spent her daddy's money on plastic surgery to enhance her, ahem, assets." It might not be what she wrote, but it's probably close enough to the truth. Unlike her introduction of me. Chuckles come from mis cuates in the back of the class, and Brittany is as stiff as a board beside me, as if my words hurt her precious ego. Brittany Ellis is used to people fawning all over her and she could use a little wake-up call. I'm actually doing her a favor. Little does she know I'm not finished with her intro. "Her secret desire," I add, getting the same reaction as she did during her introduction, "is to date a Mexicano before she graduates." As expected, my words are met by comments and low whistles from the back of the room. "Way to go, Fuentes," my friend Lucky barks out. "I'll date you, mamacita, " another says. I give a high five to another Latino Blood named Marcus sitting behind me just as I catch Isa shaking her head as if I did something wrong. What? I'm just having a little fun with a rich girl from the north side. Brittany's gaze shifts from Colin to me. I take one look at Colin and with my eyes tell him game on. Colin's face instantly turns bright red, resembling a chile pepper. I have definitely invaded his territory.

The tornadic bundle of legs and arms and feet and hands push farther into the kitchen until only the occasional flailing limb is visible from the living room, where I can’t believe I’m still standing. A spectator in my own life, I watch the supernova of my two worlds colliding: Mom and Galen. Human and Syrena. Poseidon and Triton. But what can I do? Who should I help? Mom, who lied to me for eighteen years, then tried to shank my boyfriend? Galen, who forgot this little thing called “tact” when he accused my mom of being a runaway fish-princess? Toraf, who…what the heck is Toraf doing, anyway? And did he really just sack my mom like an opposing quarterback? The urgency level for a quick decision elevates to right-freaking-now. I decide that screaming is still best for everyone-it’s nonviolent, distracting, and one of the things I’m very, very good at. I open my mouth, but Rayna beats me to it-only, her scream is much more valuable than mine would have been, because she includes words with it. “Stop it right now, or I’ll kill you all!” She pushed past me with a decrepit, rusty harpoon from God-knows-what century, probably pillaged from one of her shipwreck excursions. She waves it at the three of them like a crazed fisherman in a Jaws movie. I hope they don’t notice she’s got it pointed backward and that if she fires it, she’ll skewer our couch and Grandma’s first attempt at quilting. It works. The bare feet and tennis shoes stop scuffling-out of fear or shock, I’m not sure-and Toraf’s head appears at the top of the counter. “Princess,” he says, breathless. “I told you to stay outside.” “Emma, run!” Mom yells. Toraf disappears again, followed by a symphony of scraping and knocking and thumping and cussing. Rayna rolls her eyes at me, grumbling to herself as she stomps into the kitchen. She adjusts the harpoon to a more deadly position, scraping the popcorn ceiling and sending rust and Sheetrock and tetanus flaking onto the floor like dirty snow. Aiming it at the mound of struggling limbs, she says, “One of you is about to die, and right now I don’t really care who it is.” Thank God for Rayna. People like Rayna get things done. People like me watch people like Rayna get things done. Then people like me round the corner of the counter as if they helped, as if they didn’t stand there and let everyone they love beat the shizzle out of one another. I peer down at the three of them all tangled up. Crossing my arms, I try to mimic Rayna’s impressive rage, but I’m pretty sure my face is only capable of what-the-crap-was-that. Mom looks up at me, nostrils flaring like moth wings. “Emma, I told you to run,” she grinds out before elbowing Toraf in the mouth so hard I think he might swallow a tooth. Then she kicks Galen in the ribs. He groans, but catches her foot before she can re-up. Toraf spits blood on the linoleum beside him and grabs Mom’s arms. She writhes and wriggles, bristling like a trapped badger and cussing like sailor on crack. Mom has never been girlie. Finally she stops, her arms and legs slumping to the floor in defeat. Tears puddle in her eyes. “Let her go,” she sobs. “She’s got nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even know about us. Take me and leave her out of this. I’ll do anything.” Which reinforces, right here and now, that my mom is Nalia. Nalia is my mom. Also, holy crap.

The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still. In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat. Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis. Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener. A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls. People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone. Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica. Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment. The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet. The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless. The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers. The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out. And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis. He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him. The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out: ‘Monsieur Bouvet!