Quickly Birthday Quotes

Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.

Embroidery?" I sucked at embroidery. Aunt Hyacinth had tried to teach me, but we'd both given it up as a lost cause.Lucy, strangely, had picked it up really quickly and embroidered a tapestry of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow for my last birthday.

When's your birthday?" I was taken aback by the question. "I don't like presents,"I said quickly, in case he got any ideas. "Who said anything about presents? I'm just asking for your date of birth." "Thirtieth of February," I said, throwing out the first date that came to mind. Xavier raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure about that?" I panicked. What had I said wrong? I ran through the months in my head and realised my mistake. OOPS--there were only twenty-eight days in February! "I mean thirtieth of April," I corrected and grinned sheepishly. Xavier laughed. "You're the first person I've ever known to forget her own birthday.

I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. Why is the Moon round? the children ask. Why is grass green? What is a dream? How deep can you dig a hole? When is the world’s birthday? Why do we have toes? Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else: ‘What did you expect the Moon to be, square?’ Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before 6-year-olds, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that we don’t know something? Is our self-esteem so fragile?

Maybe my movie isn't over, I say, because sometimes moviemakers trick the audience with a false bad ending, and just when you think the movie is going to end badly, something dramatic happens, which leads to the happy ending. This seems like a good spot for something dramatic to happen, especially since it's my birthday.

We will never fight again, our lovely, quick, template-ready arguments. Our delicate cross-stitch of bickers. The house becomes a physical encyclopedia of no-longer hers, which shocks and shocks and is the principal difference between our house and a house where illness has worked away. Ill people, in their last day on Earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying ‘OH NO YOU DON’T COCK-CHEEK’. She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone. She won’t ever use (make-up, turmeric, hairbrush, thesaurus). She will never finish (Patricia Highsmith novel, peanut butter, lip balm). And I will never shop for green Virago Classics for her birthday. I will stop finding her hairs. I will stop hearing her breathing.

I came up with a handful of rules: write a delight every day for a year; begin and end on my birthday, August 1; draft them quickly; and write them by hand. The rules made it a discipline for me. A practice. Spend time thinking and writing about delight every day.

AFTER THEIR FALL INTO TARTARUS, jumping three hundred feet to the Mansion of Night should have felt quick. Instead, Annabeth’s heart seemed to slow down. Between the beats she had ample time to write her own obituary. Annabeth Chase, died age 17. BA-BOOM. (Assuming her birthday, July 12, had passed while she was in Tartarus; but honestly, she had no idea.) BA-BOOM. Died of massive injuries while leaping like an idiot into the abyss of Chaos and splattering on the entry hall floor of Nyx’s mansion. BA-BOOM. Survived by her father, stepmother, and two stepbrothers who barely knew her. BA-BOOM. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Camp Half-Blood, assuming Gaea hasn’t already destroyed it. Her feet hit solid floor. Pain shot up her legs, but she stumbled forward and broke into a run, hauling Percy after her.

With any word, there are subconscious associations, which simply means that certain words make you think of certain things, even if you don't want to. The word 'cake,' for example, might remind you of your birthday, and the words 'prison warden' might remind you of someone you haven't seen in a very long time. The word 'Beatrice' reminds me of a volunteer organization that was swarming with corruption, and the word 'midnight' reminds me that I must keep writing this chapter very quickly or else I will probably drown.

Listening to him, I realized how long it had been since I’d felt like I had the world by the balls, how many quick birthdays had gone by since that first year in Europe when I was so ignorant and so confident that every splinter of luck made me feel like a roaring champion.

How late is it? How long have we been sitting here? I look at my watch – three thirty and the day is almost ending. It’s October. All those kids recently returned to classrooms with new bags and pencil cases will be looking forward to half term already. How quickly it goes. Halloween soon, then firework night. Christmas. Spring. Easter. Then there’s my birthday in May. I’ll be seventeen. How long can I stave it off? I don’t know. All I know is that I have two choices – stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.

it’s a terrible feeling when you first fall in love. your mind gets completely taken over, you can’t function properly anymore. the world turns into a dream place, nothing seems real. you forget your keys, no one seems to be talking English and even if they are you don’t care as you can’t hear what they’re saying anyway, and it doesn’t matter since your not really there. things you cared about before don’t seem to matter anymore and things you didn’t think you cared about suddenly do. I must become a brilliant cook, I don’t want to waste time seeing my friends when I could be with him, I feel no sympathy for all those people in India killed by an earthquake last night; what is the matter with me? It’s a kind of hell, but you feel like your in heaven. even your body goes out of control, you can’t eat, you don’t sleep properly, your legs turn to jelly as your not sure where the floor is anymore. you have butterflies permanently, not only in your tummy but all over your body - your hands, your shoulders, your chest, your eyes everything’s just a jangling mess of nerve endings tingling with fire. it makes you feel so alive. and yet its like being suffocated, you don’t seem to be able to see or hear anything real anymore, its like people are speaking to you through treacle, and so you stay in your cosy place with him, the place that only you two understand. occasionally your forced to come up for air by your biggest enemy, Real Life, so you do the minimum then head back down under your love blanket for more, knowing it’s uncomfortable but compulsory. and then, once you think you’ve got him, the panic sets in. what if he goes off me? what if I blow it, say the wrong thing? what if he meets someone better than me? Prettier, thinner, funnier, more like him? who doesn’t bite there nails? perhaps he doesn’t feel the same, maybe this is all in my head and this is just a quick fling for him. why did I tell him that stupid story about not owning up that I knew who spilt the ink on the teachers bag and so everyone was punished for it? does he think I'm a liar? what if I'm not very good at that blow job thing and he’s just being patient with me? he says he loves me; yes, well, we can all say words, can’t we? perhaps he’s just being polite. of course you do your best to keep all this to yourself, you don’t want him to think you're a neurotic nutcase, but now when he’s away doing Real Life it’s agony, your mind won’t leave you alone, it tortures you and examines your every moment spent together, pointing out how stupid you’ve been to allow yourself to get this carried away, how insane you are to imagine someone would feel like that about you. dad did his best to reassure me, but nothing he said made a difference - it was like I wanted to see Simon, but didn’t want him to see me.

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined Half of the night with our old friend Who’d showed us in the end To a bed I reached in one drunk stride. Already I lay snug, And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side. I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug, Suddenly, from behind, In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed: Your instep to my heel, My shoulder-blades against your chest. It was not sex, but I could feel The whole strength of your body set, Or braced, to mine, And locking me to you As if we were still twenty-two When our grand passion had not yet Become familial. My quick sleep had deleted all Of intervening time and place. I only knew The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.

Yeah, like, you know, fun. You’re fun. And kind of funny. And pretty interesting. I don’t know how she makes my temper rise so quickly, and over stupid, petty shit, and I can’t explain why, but I like it.

For him time stood still and then every few years accelerated in a rush, like the quick re-wind of a film, but for Nicole the years slipped away by clock and calendar and birthday, with the added poignance of her perishable beauty.

They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong. Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose. However more abbreviated than it's cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old. February is pitiless, and it's boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed. Except to the extent that it "tints the buds and swells the leaves within" February is as useless as the extra r in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui holding both progress and contentment at bay. If February is the color of lard on rye, its aroma is that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you may be little but you're small! Where you twice your tiresome length, few of us would survive to greet the merry month of May.

Some ads loop on the screen, but the house lights are still on, and I quickly scan the room, seeing a few loners spread out. There’s also a couple sitting in the back row to my right,

As he sat on the side of the bed, he felt the room, the house and the night as empty. In the next room Nicole muttered something in her sleep. For him time stood still and then every few years accelerated in a rush, like the quick re-wind of a film, but for Nicole the years slipped away by clock and calendar and birthday, with the added poignance of her perishable beauty.

Happy Birthday, Jennifer. And a pencil-line drawing of a house. And under a piece of Scotch tape a ring, just a cheap ring with a blue glass stone. I'm back, it read. Love, Cameron Quick.

In a quick fit of anger she would go to the cupboard, and getting out her dolls would begin to torment them. She had always despised the idiotic creatures which, however, arrived with each Christmas and birthday.

But even as a kid you learn pretty quick that church doesn’t start and stop with the hours of service posted on the church sign. No, church dragged on like the last hour of the school day as we waited in the hot car with Dad for Mom to finish socializing in the fellowship hall. Church lingered long into the gold-tinted Sunday afternoons when Amanda and I gamboled around the house, stripped down to our white slips like little brides. Church showed up at the front door with a chicken casserole when the whole family was down with the flu and called after midnight to ask for prayer and to cry. It gossiped in the pickup line at school and babysat us on Friday nights. It teased me and tugged at my pigtails and taught me how to sing. Church threw Dad a big surprise party for his fortieth birthday and let me in on the secret ahead of time. Church came to me far more than I went to it, and I’m glad.

One quick glance around the room and I realise that I have somehow stumbled into a wannabe serial killer convention. Every single person in the room looks as if they are concealing a weapon of some sort. My heart thuds rapidly in my chest as I sneak past an elderly man who grins lecherously at me, flashing his gold tooth. Oh dear God, I’m going to die! First, I get dumped – on my birthday no less – and now I’m going to get knifed in some seedy bar!

This is the way it goes. In your mid-forties you have your first crisis of mortality (death will not ignore me); and ten years later you have your first crisis of age (my body whispers that death is already intrigued by me). But something very interesting happens to you in between. As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get the sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself: That went a bit quick. That went a bit quick. In certain moods, you may want to put it rather more forcefully. As in: OY!! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!! ... Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.

This is the way that it goes. In your mid forties you have your first crisis of mortality (death will not ignore me); and ten years later you have your first crisis of age (my body whispers that death is already intrigued by me). But something very interesting happens to you in between. As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get that sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself; That went a bit quick. That went a bit quick. In certain moods you may want to put it a bit more forcefully. As in: OY!! That went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!.... Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.

I once met a time traveler who insisted on only traveling to his own birthdays. He claimed he was over a thousand years old. I found the idea rather ridiculous, but I have to admit, he did get a lot of free drinks that way.” -Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2115   The

Dude, what're you waiting for?" Carlos calls. "Plant one on her." I lift my eyes and am shocked to see Brandon is staring at my mouth. He swallows audibly and flicks his gaze to mine. the emotions darkening the soft green color are too confusing to name. Does he want to back out? An exhale of breath leaves Brandon's lips, almost like a laugh, and he scoots closer to me on the blanket. I twist my legs under myself, sitting tall as I face him. He cups my chin and tilts it toward him, drowning me in the now dark-green depths of his eyes, the cologne I gave him for his birthday filling my head. It's woodsy and yummy and I always loved how it smelled on the store testers, but on Brandon, it's even sexier. My eyes flutter closed, and I inhale again, this time slowly. Goose bumps prickle my arms, and my head gets fuzzy. Brandon slides his hand down the column of my neck and brings the other up, threading his fingers through the hair at my nape. His breath fans across my cheek, and everything south of my bellybutton squeezes tight. When his mouth first meets mine, it's hesitant, questioning. But as I move my lips with his, he quickly grows bolder, coaxing them apart. Desire, pure and raw, electrifies my veins as his tongue sweeps my mouth. A whimpering sound springs from my chest, and instinctively, I wrap my arms around his neck, tugging him closer. Needing more. My teeth graze his full bottom lip, and I pull it, sucking on it gently. He moans and knots his fingers in my hair, and a thrill dances down my back. Brandon is an amazing kisser, just as I knew he would be. I have no control over my body's reactions. I lose myself in his lips, his tongue, and his strong arms, forgetting time and space and even my surroundings...

If we think of eroticism not as sex per se, but as a vibrant, creative energy, it’s easy to see that Stephanie’s erotic pulse is alive and well. But her eroticism no longer revolves around her husband. Instead, it’s been channeled to her children. There are regular playdates for Jake but only three dates a year for Stephanie and Warren: two birthdays, hers and his, and one anniversary. There is the latest in kids’ fashion for Sophia, but only college sweats for Stephanie. They rent twenty G-rated movies for every R-rated movie. There are languorous hugs for the kids while the grown-ups must survive on a diet of quick pecks. This brings me to another point. Stephanie gets tremendous physical pleasure from her children. Let me be perfectly clear here: she knows the difference between adult sexuality and the sensuousness of caring for small children. She, like most mothers, would never dream of seeking sexual gratification from her children. But, in a sense, a certain replacement has occurred. The sensuality that women experience with their children is, in some ways, much more in keeping with female sexuality in general. For women, much more than for men, sexuality exists along what the Italian historian Francesco Alberoni calls a “principle of continuity.” Female eroticism is diffuse, not localized in the genitals but distributed throughout the body, mind, and senses. It is tactile and auditory, linked to smell, skin, and contact; arousal is often more subjective than physical, and desire arises on a lattice of emotion. In the physicality between mother and child lie a multitude of sensuous experiences. We caress their silky skin, we kiss, we cradle, we rock. We nibble their toes, they touch our faces, we lick their fingers, let them bite us when they’re teething. We are captivated by them and can stare at them for hours. When they devour us with those big eyes, we are besotted, and so are they. This blissful fusion bears a striking resemblance to the physical connection between lovers. In fact, when Stephanie describes the early rapture of her relationship with Warren—lingering gazes, weekends in bed, baby talk, toe-nibbling—the echoes are unmistakable. When she says, “At the end of the day, I have nothing left to give,” I believe her. But I also have come to believe that at the end of the day, there may be nothing more she needs. All this play activity and intimate involvement with her children’s development, all this fleshy connection, has captured Stephanie’s erotic potency to the detriment of the couple’s intimacy and sexuality. This is eros redirected. Her sublimated energy is displaced onto the children, who become the centerpiece of her emotional gratification.

Greg accepted this with some incredulity, then his eyes widened at the ramifications of what she was saying. “Then, I’m your birthday gift?” She nodded slowly, then tilted her head, and said, “That’s an odd smile. What are you thinking?” Greg was thinking he was the luckiest son of a bitch alive as his mind automatically readjusted his earlier imaginings of a large, ugly woman stripping and climbing on top of him, to this woman doing so. He allowed himself to enjoy the fantasy for a moment, but then realized that his body was enjoying it way too much, a noticeable bulge was growing in his pants. He gave his head a shake. -Gregg & Lissianna

At five minutes to five,Jim walked into Mary's office, wearing his gray sweater and balancing four pieces of birthday cake on two plates. He put the plates down on Mary's empty desk and glanced at the doorway to Nick's office. "Where's Mary?" he asked. "She left almost an hour ago," Lauren said. "She said to tell you that the nearest fire extinguisher is beside the elevators-whatever that means. I'll be right back.I have to take these letters in to Nick." As she got up and started around the desk, she was looking down at the letters in her hand,and what happened next stunned her into immobility. "I miss you,darling," Jim said, quickly pulling her into his arms. A moment later he released her so suddenly that Lauren staggered back a step. "Nick!" he said. "Look at the sweater Lauren gave me for my birthday. She made it herself.And I brought you a piece of my birthday cake-she made that too." Seemingly oblivious to Nick's thunderous countenance,he grinned and added, "I have to get back downstairs." To Lauren he said, "I'll see you later, love." And then he walked out. In a state of shock, Lauren stared at his retreating back.She was still staring after him when Nick spun her around to face him. "You viindictive little bitch,you gave him my sweater! What else has he gotten that belongs to me?" "What else?" Lauren repeated, her voice rising. "What are you talking about?" His hands tightened. "Your delectiable body, my sweet.That's what I'm talking about." Lauren's amazement gave way to comprehension and then to fury. "How dare you call me names, you hypocrite!" she exploded, too incensed to be afraid. "Ever since I've known you, you've been telling me that there's nothing promiscuous about a woman satisfying her sexual desires with any man she pleases.And now-" she literally choked on her wrath "-and now,when you think I've done it,you call me a dirty name. You of all people-you,the United States contender for the bedroom Olympics!

There are two ways to turn devils into angels: First, acknowledge things about them that you genuinely appreciate. Uncle Morty took you to the beach when you were a kid. Your mom still sends you money on your birthday. Your ex-wife is a good mother to your children. There must be something you sincerely appreciate about this person. Shift your attention from the mean and nasty things they have said or done to the kind and helpful things they have said or done—even if there are just a few or even only one. You have defined this person by their iniquities. You can just as easily—actually, more easily—define them by their redeeming qualities. It’s your movie. Change the script. Perhaps you are still arguing that the person who has hurt you has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She is evil incarnate, Rosemary’s baby conceived with Satan himself, poster child for the dark side of the Force, destined to wreak havoc and horror in the lives of everyone she touches. A nastier bitch never walked the earth. Got it. Let’s say all of this is true—the person who troubles you is a no-good, cheating, lying SOB. Now here’s the second devil-transformer. Consider: How has this person helped you to grow? What spiritual muscles have you developed that you would not have built if this person had been nicer to you? Have you learned to hold your power and self-esteem in the presence of attempted insult? Do you now speak your truth more quickly and directly? Are you now asking for what you want instead of passively deferring? Are you setting healthier boundaries? Have you deepened in patience and compassion? Do you make more self-honoring choices? There are many benefits you might have gained, or still might gain, from someone who challenges you.

Whenever you talk to nana on one of her birthdays - her real name, by the way, is Antoinette Frances Holzworth DeMaio, though she's better known as Tebby - she'll tell you how old she is, quickly followed by 'Ain't that revoltin'? Da woyums should have me by now. I should be playnt-ed. Why ain't I playnt-ed yet?' 'Because the Lord doesn't like complainers,' my mom will say.

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side, and light on skepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'. But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they are willing to accept inadequate answers, they don't pose follow-up questions, the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in. Something has happened between first and twelfth grade. And it's not just puberty. I'd guess that it's partly peer pressure not to excel - except in sports, partly that the society teaches short-term gratification, partly the impression that science or mathematics won't buy you a sports car, partly that so little is expected of students, and partly that there are few rewards or role-models for intelligent discussion of science and technology - or even for learning for it's own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as nerds or geeks or grinds. But there's something else. I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. 'Why is the Moon round?', the children ask. 'Why is grass green?', 'What is a dream?', 'How deep can you dig a hole?', 'When is the world's birthday?', 'Why do we have toes?'. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation, or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. 'What did you expect the Moon to be? Square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science.

The British public had quickly and sincerely taken the new princess-to-be to their hearts. Diana had high expectations to live up to and she was still very young. She had barely turned twenty. Her birthday was July 1. I wondered if some part of the reason for the late July wedding date was so that she would be comfortably out of her teens when she married. I thought mischievously about the palace’s reaction to possible headlines such as “Prince Weds Teenager.

I wrote on the birthday itself, ‘and as for being twenty-one, I’ll leave it at that. I can’t see that years make any difference, or days, or hours, it’s things that happen to one that matter. I shan’t look back. No guttering candles and dripping wicks for me. When I go let me go quickly, still a bright flame, no flickering! Meanwhile Adams and I celebrated my majority by taking Annabelle Lee out to sea and catching 13 pollock, which was a good start for the boat.

Listening to him, I realized how long it had been since I felt like I had the world by the balls, how many quick birthdays had gone by since that first year in Europe when I was so ignorant and so confident that every splinter of luck made me feel like a roaring champion. I haven't felt that way in a long time. Perhaps in the ambush of those years, the idea that I was a champion had been shot out from under me. But I remembered it now and it made me feel old and slightly nervous that I had done so little in so long a time.

Happy birthday,” he whispered, his breath landing warm and suddenly close to my lips, making my insides flip. And just as quickly as he’d surprised me with the cake, he kissed me, one frosting-covered hand moving from my hair to the back of my neck, the other solid and warm in the small of my back, pressing us together, my chest against his ribs, my hip bones just below his, the tops of our bare summer legs hot and touching. I stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and his mouth tasted like marzipan flowers and clove cigarettes, and in ten seconds the whole of my life was wrapped up in that one kiss, that one wish, that one secret that would forever divide my life into two parts. Up, down. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after. In that single moment, Matt, formerly known as friend, became something else entirely. I kissed him back. I forgot time. I forgot my feet. I forgot the people outside, waiting for us to rejoin the party. I forgot what happens when friends cross into this space. And if my lungs didn’t fill and my heart didn’t beat and my blood didn’t pump without my intervention, I would have forgotten about them, too. I could have stayed like that all night, standing in front of the sink, Matt’s black apple hair brushing my cheeks, heart thumping, lucky and forgetful…

I water my plants when the soil looks dry, and I haven’t forgotten my nephew’s birthday once ever. In fact, I started to think about my nephew and all the time he uses that phone, always checking for likes on that Instacart. It’s good to be bored in the car, I always tell him. Spend some time with just yourself and your thoughts and nothing to do. How else will you learn who you are? I’m worried about your posture, dear. I’m concerned that it comes from all the looking down. What with your phone and the Xbox and the taxi TV and that music player you wear on your arm and the headphones that look like donuts on your ears, doesn’t it make life so much smaller? If absolutely everything important is only happening on such a small screen, isn’t that a shame? Especially when the world is so overwhelmingly large and surprising? Are you missing too much? You can’t imagine it now, but you’ll look like me one day, even though you’ll feel just the same as you do now. You’ll catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and think how quickly it’s all gone, and I wonder if all the time you used watching those families whose lives are filmed for the television, and making those cartoons of yourselves with panting dog tongues, and chasing after that terrible Pokémon fellow…well, will it feel like time well spent?

Mom?” Then again, louder. “Mom?” She turned around so quickly, she knocked the pan off the stove and nearly dropped the gray paper into the open flame there. I saw her reach back and slap her hand against the knobs, twisting a dial until the smell of gas disappeared. “I don’t feel good. Can I stay home today?” No response, not even a blink. Her jaw was working, grinding, but it took me walking over to the table and sitting down for her to find her voice. “How—how did you get in here?” “I have a bad headache and my stomach hurts,” I told her, putting my elbows up on the table. I knew she hated when I whined, but I didn’t think she hated it enough to come over and grab me by the arm again. “I asked you how you got in here, young lady. What’s your name?” Her voice sounded strange. “Where do you live?” Her grip on my skin only tightened the longer I waited to answer. It had to have been a joke, right? Was she sick, too? Sometimes cold medicine did funny things to her. Funny things, though. Not scary things. “Can you tell me your name?” she repeated. “Ouch!” I yelped, trying to pull my arm away. “Mom, what’s wrong?” She yanked me up from the table, forcing me onto my feet. “Where are your parents? How did you get in this house?” Something tightened in my chest to the point of snapping. “Mom, Mommy, why—” “Stop it,” she hissed, “stop calling me that!” “What are you—?” I think I must have tried to say something else, but she dragged me over to the door that led out into the garage. My feet slid against the wood, skin burning. “Wh-what’s wrong with you?” I cried. I tried twisting out of her grasp, but she wouldn’t even look at me. Not until we were at the door to the garage and she pushed my back up against it. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I know you’re confused, but I promise that I’m not your mother. I don’t know how you got into this house, and, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know—” “I live here!” I told her. “I live here! I’m Ruby!” When she looked at me again, I saw none of the things that made Mom my mother. The lines that formed around her eyes when she smiled were smoothed out, and her jaw was clenched around whatever she wanted to say next. When she looked at me, she didn’t see me. I wasn’t invisible, but I wasn’t Ruby. “Mom.” I started to cry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, I promise I’ll be good—I’ll go to school today and won’t be sick, and I’ll pick up my room. I’m sorry. Please remember. Please!” She put one hand on my shoulder and the other on the door handle. “My husband is a police officer. He’ll be able to help you get home. Wait in here—and don’t touch anything.” The door opened and I was pushed into a wall of freezing January air. I stumbled down onto the dirty, oil-stained concrete, just managing to catch myself before I slammed into the side of her car. I heard the door shut behind me, and the lock click into place; heard her call Dad’s name as clearly as I heard the birds in the bushes outside the dark garage. She hadn’t even turned on the light for me. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over. The door was locked. “I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!” Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights.

Teeth retracting, Lissianna pulled free of Greg Hewitt’s neck and glanced guiltily over her shoulder. The sight of Thomas and her mother staring at her wide-eyed from the doorway was enough to make her stand quickly, her hands moving to straighten her clothes and hair. “I cannot believe this!” Marguerite stomped into the room. “Sneaking around and unwrapping your gifts before your birthday like you’re twelve instead of two hundred! What were you thinking?” “Well, technically, it is her birthday, Aunt Marguerite,” Thomas pointed out as he closed the door. Lissianna tossed her cousin a grateful smile, but said, “I wasn’t sneaking around. I came up to get fresh stockings.” She scooped them up off the bed, and added, “And I didn’t unwrap him.” Marguerite stared pointedly at the floor. After glancing down to see the untied bow lying forgotten there, Lissianna grimaced, and admitted, “Okay, I did unwrap him, but only because he was upset, and I hated to leave him distressed.” She paused, then tilted her head, and said, “I take it Bastien’s arrival interrupted you before you could put the full whammy on him? He was upset about being kidnapped and wanted to be untied when I got here.” “I didn’t kidnap him,” Marguerite said with affront, then peered past Lissianna to Dr. Gregory Hewitt to say, “I didn’t kidnap you. I borrowed you.” -Marguerite, Thomas, & Lissianna

Bruno stared at him in surprise. ‘What did you say?’ he asked. ‘I said my birthday is April the fifteenth nineteen thirty-four.’ Bruno’s eyes opened wide and his mouth made the shape of an O. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Why not?’ asked Shmuel. ‘No,’ said Bruno, shaking his head quickly. ‘I don’t mean I don’t believe you. I mean I’m surprised, that’s all. Because my birthday is April the fifteenth too. And I was born in nineteen thirty-four. We were born on the same day.’ Shmuel thought about this. ‘So you’re nine too,’ he said. ‘Yes. Isn’t that strange?’ ‘Very strange,’ said Shmuel. ‘Because there may be dozens of Shmuels on this side of the fence but I don’t think that I’ve ever met anyone with the same birthday as me before.’ ‘We’re like twins,’ said Bruno. ‘A little bit,’ agreed Shmuel.

Pulling back, he gave her a little space and grinned as she found her balance again. “Do you think that will ever get old?” Harper asked with an embarrassed blush. “Christ, I hope not. Just remember how you feel right now because you might be really mad at me in about one minute.” “Uh-oh. I don’t think I like the sound of that.” Harper raised an eyebrow at him. He took her hand and led her toward the studio before pulling her in front of him, her back to his chest. It was the safest position to avoid a kick in the nuts and the best position to block a fast escape. He felt Harper’s quick intake of breath as she turned to face him with a hand over her mouth. “What did you do?” she said through her fingers. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.” He pushed her through the door as everyone inside shouted, “Surprise!

My dearest Violet, A belated birthday gift along with my regrets for not celebrating as we should have. All my love, C Tears filled her eyes as she touched her chest where the locket rested beneath her clothing. She wore it still because she couldn't forget the morning he had given it to her, nor how she had felt, dumbstruck and silly with her love for him. A terrible but true way to describe the sheer bliss that had surrounded them. Blinking away the tears, she unwrapped the package revealing four books: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Gray, and The Tenant of Windfell Hall. A quick examination revealed them to be all first editions. Dropping into the chair, she read his note again two more times. Her finger traced the C. As much as she despised what he had done, she couldn't stop herself from missing him.

A supernova occurs when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time more brightly than all the stars in its galaxy. “It’s like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once, supernovae are extremely rare. A star can burn for billions of years, but it dies just once and quickly, and only a few dying stars explode. Most expire quietly, like a camp fire at dawn. In a typical galaxy, consisting of a hundred billion stars, a supernova will occur on average once every two or three hundred years. Looking for a supernova, therefore, was a little like standing on the observation platform of the Empire State Building with a telescope and searching windows around Manhattan in the hope of finding, let us say, someone lighting a twenty-first birthday cake.

And Caravaggio when he had heard it in the last few years of the war never really liked it, never liked to listen to it. In his heart he had Hana’s version from many years before. Now he listened with a pleasure because she was singing again, but this was quickly altered by the way she sang. Not the passion of her at sixteen but echoing the tentative circle of light around her in the darkness. She was singing it as if it was something scarred, as if one couldn’t ever again bring all the hope of the song together. It had been altered by the five years leading to this night of her twenty-first birthday in the forty-fifth year of the twentieth century. Singing in the voice of a tired traveller, alone against everything. A new testament. There was no certainty to the song anymore, the singer could only be one voice against all the mountains of power. That was the only sureness. The one voice was the single unspoiled thing.

I believe another one of the Song girls has a birthday coming up.” He sings, “You are sixteen, going on seventeen…” I feel a strong surge of love for him, my dad who I am so lucky to have. “What song are you singing?” Kitty interrupts. I take Kitty’s hands and spin her around the kitchen with me. “I am sixteen, going on seventeen; I know that I’m naïve. Fellows I meet may tell me I’m sweet; willingly I believe.” Daddy throws his dish towel over his shoulder and marches in place. In a deep voice he baritones, “You need someone older and wiser telling you what to do…” “This song is sexist,” Kitty says as I dip her. “Indeed it is,” Daddy agrees, swatting her with the towel. “And the boy in question was not, in fact, older and wiser. He was a Nazi in training.” Kitty skitters away from both of us. “What are you guys even talking about?” “It’s from The Sound of Music,” I say. “You mean that movie about the nun? Never seen it.” “How have you seen The Sopranos but not The Sound of Music?” Alarmed, Daddy says, “Kitty’s been watching The Sopranos?” “Just the commercials,” Kitty quickly says. I go on singing to myself, spinning in a circle like Liesl at the gazebo. “I am sixteen going on seventeen, innocent as a rose…Fellows I meet may tell me I’m sweet, and willingly I believe…” “Why would you just willingly believe some random fellows you don’t even know?” “It’s the song, Kitty, not me! God!” I stop spinning. “Liesl was kind of a ninny, though. I mean, it was basically her fault they almost got captured by the Nazis.” “I would venture to say it was Captain von Trapp’s fault,” Daddy says. “Rolfe was a kid himself--he was going to let them go, but then Georg had to antagonize him.” He shakes his head. “Georg von Trapp, he had quite the ego. Hey, we should do a Sound of Music night!” “Sure,” I say. “This movie sounds terrible,” Kitty says. “What kind of name is Georg?” We ignore her.

When I moved to the U.S. at six, I was unrecognizable to my mother. I was angry, chronically dissatisfied, bratty. On my second day in America, she ran out of the room in tears after I angrily demanded that she buy me a pack of colored pencils. You're not you! she sputtered between sobs, which brought me to a standstill. She couldn't recognize me. That's what she told me later, that this was not the daughter she had last seen. Being too young, I didn't know enough to ask: But what did you expect? Who am I supposed to be to you? But if I was unrecognizable to her, she was also unrecognizable to me. In this new country, she was disciplinarian, restrictive, prone to angry outbursts, easily frustrated, so fascist with arbitrary rules that struck me, even as a six-year-old, as unreasonable. For most of my childhood and adolescence, my mother was my antagonist. Whenever she'd get mad, she'd take her index finger and poke me in the forehead. You you you you you, she'd say, as if accusing me of being me. She was quick to blame me for the slightest infractions, a spilled glass, a way of sitting while eating, my future ambitions (farmer or teacher), the way I dressed, what I ate, even the way I practiced English words in the car..She was the one to deny me: the extra dollar added to my allowance; an extra hour to my curfew; the money to buy my friends' birthday presents, so that I was forced to gift them, no matter what the season, leftover Halloween candy. In those early days, we lived so frugally that we even washed, alongside the dishes in the sink, used sheets of cling wrap for reuse. She was the one to punish me, sending me to kneel in the bathtub of the darkened bathroom, carrying my father's Casio watch with an alarm setting to account for when time was up. Yet it was I who would kneel for even longer, going further and further, taking more punishment just to spite her, just to show that it meant nothing. I could take more. The sun moved across the bathroom floor, from the window to the door.

Lying," he said out loud, hoping no one would hear. "I need to lie. Teach me, quickly." I wouldn't if I were you, came the response. For a start, it's a variable concept here. You are in a culture where ambiguity has been raised to a high level. Let me give an example: depending on phrasing, circumstance, expression, body movement, intonation and context, the statement "I love you" can mean I love you; I don't love you; I hate you; I want to have sex with you; I do, in fact, love your sister; I don't love you any more; leave me alone, I'm tired, or I'm sorry I forgot your birthday. The person being talked to would instantly understand the meaning but might choose to attribute an entirely different meaning to the statement. Lying is a social act and the nature and import of the lie depends in effect on an unspoken agreement between the parties concerned. Please note that this description does not even begin to explore the concept of deep lies, in which the speaker simultaneously says something he knows to be untrue and genuinely believes it nonetheless: politicians are particularly adept at this.

Bell treated his friend and colleague Watson generously. Though he had no legal obligations to do so, he awarded Watson 10 percent of the company, allowing Watson to retire rich at the age of just twenty-seven. Able to do anything he wanted, Watson devoted the rest of his life to just that. He traveled the world, read widely, and took a degree in geology at MIT for the simple satisfaction of improving his brain. He then started a shipyard, which quickly grew to employ four thousand men, producing a scale of stress and obligation way beyond anything he wished for, so he sold the business, converted to Islam, and became a follower of Edward Bellamy, a radical philosopher and quasi communist who for a short period in the 1880s enjoyed phenomenal esteem and popularity. Tiring of Bellamy, Watson moved to England in early middle age and took up acting, for which he showed an unexpected talent. He proved particularly adept at Shakespearean roles and performed many times at Stratford-upon-Avon before returning to America and a life of quiet retirement. He died, contented and rich, at his winter home on Pass-Grille Key, Florida, just shy of his eighty-first birthday in 1934.

Rapunzel woke up to the dazzling, sparkling, gently chiming display with more cheer than anyone really should who had spent the last six thousand and approximately nine hundred days in a lonely tower. "This birthday is going to be great. I just know it!" She only really knew about birthdays because she had read about them in one of the thirty-seven books she owned: Book #3: Stories from Rome and Other Great Empires. Marc Antony apparently had splendid birthdays, and Cleopatra gave him the most cunning gifts. Anyway, they seemed like a marvelous idea, and she had adopted this time of year as her own. Had there been anyone around, they would have been amazed at the hermit's beauty. For one thing, her cheeks were surprisingly rosy for a girl who had been indoors her whole life. (This was because on sunny Wednesday and Saturday afternoons she carefully followed the window-shaped spot of sun around her room, lying down and soaking in the warm rays.) Her eyes were large and green because of parents she had never known. Her lips were usually set in an expectant smile because she was Rapunzel; good-natured, lighthearted, with a quick mind that constantly refused to be crushed by her circumstances.

Alf caught the child and gave him to Father. She was gripping Coral, thrusting her out. Willing, anxious hands were holding a blanket. She was trying to make the boy Walter jump too. But the children were terrified, and dazed by the smoke. They would not jump. They would not obey. Hannah lifted them, then dropped them on to the blanket. ‘Hannah, come down. Jump yerself. Quick! Quick!’ Alf was struggling to fight his way in through the flames but was beaten back —the place was a furnace. He tried yet again and was beaten back. ‘Us Bullens sticks together!’ he was shouting. ‘That’s me sister, that’s Hannah Bullen in there. I’m goin’ to get ‘er. Us Bullens sticks together!’ Then all in a moment he reeled and fell, and they saw that his face and chest were blackened. ‘Hannah! Hannah!’ ‘My Gawd, she don’t ‘ear us...’ ‘The room’s roarin’!’ ‘Someone go and get ‘old of the captain. Captain, for Gawd’s sake come on down ‘ere!’ ‘Fetch a ladder, we might get ‘er out through the winder.’ ‘Hannah! Hannah Bullen!’ ‘Oh, Christ, the roof...’ With a sudden sharp crash the roof fell in and the cottage blazed up magnificently, like a beacon set on the crest of the hill. It was New Year’s Day. It was Hannah’s birthday.

One of the things I loved about Chris was his sense of humor, which seemed perfectly matched with mine, even at its most offbeat. April Fools’ Day was always a major highlight. A month before our daughter was due, I woke him up in the middle of the night. “Don’t panic,” I told him, “but I think I’m going into labor.” “Do we have a bag?” he asked, jumping up immediately. “No, no, don’t worry.” I slipped out of bed and went to take a shower. Chris immediately got dressed and, calmly but very quickly, gathered my clothes and packed a suitcase. “I’m ready!” he announced, barging into the bathroom. “Babe, do you know what day it is?” I asked sweetly. It was two A.M., April 1. “Are you kidding me?” he said, disbelieving. I laughed and plunged back into the shower. He quickly got revenge by flushing the toilet, sending a burst of cold water across my body. In retrospect, maybe I’d been a little cruel, but we did love teasing each other. At our wedding, we’d smooshed cake into each other’s faces. That began a tradition that continued at each birthday--whether it was ours or not. The routine never seemed to get old. We’d giggle and laugh, chasing each other as if we were crazy people. Our friends and neighbors got used to it--and learned to stay out of the line of fire.

There were four ways out of Nickel. One: serve your time. A typical sentence fell between six months and two years, but the administration had the power to confer a legal discharge before then at its discretion. Good behavior was a trigger for a legal discharge, if a careful boy gathered enough merits for promotion to Ace. Whereupon he was released into the bosom of his family, who were very glad to have him back or else winced at the sight of his face bobbing up the walk, the start of another countdown to the next calamity. If you had family. If not, the state of Florida's child-welfare apparatus had assorted custodial remedies, some more pleasant than others. You could also serve time by aging out. The schools showed boys the door on their eighteenth birthday, quick hand-shake and pocket change...Boys arrived banged up in different ways before they got to Nickel and picked up more dents and damage during their term. Often graver missteps and more fierce institutions waited. Nickel boys were f***** before, during, and after their time at the school, if one were to characterize the general trajectory... Three: You could die. Of 'natural causes' even, if abetted by unhealthy conditions, malnutrition, and the pitiless constellation of negligence. In the summer of 1945, one young by died of heart failure while locked in a sweatbox, a popular corrective at that time, and the medical examiner called it natural causes.

At some point in life-sometimes in youth, sometimes late-each of us is due to awaken to our mortality. There are so many triggers: a glance in a mirror at your sagging jowls, graying hair, stooping shoulders; the march of birthdays, especially those round decades-fifty, sixty, seventy; meeting a friend you have not seen in a long while and being shocked at how he or she has aged; seeing old photographs of yourself and those long dead who peopled your childhood; encountering Mister Death in a dream. What do you feel when you have such experiences? What do you do with them? Do you plunge into frenetic activity to burn off the anxiety and avoid the subject? Try to remove wrinkles with cosmetic surgery or dye your hair? Decide to stay thirty-nine for a few more years? Distract yourself quickly with work and everyday life routine? Forget all such experiences? Ignore your dreams? I urge you not to distract yourself. Instead, savor awakening. Take advantage of it. Pause as you stare into the photograph of the younger you. Let the poignant moment sweep over you and linger a bit; taste the sweetness of it as well as the bitterness. Keep in mind the advantage of remaining aware of death, of hugging its shadow to you. Such awareness can integrate the darkness with your spark of life and enhance your life while you still have it. The way to value life, the way to feel compassion for others, the way to love anything with greatest depth is to be aware that these experiences are destined to be lost.

less rotted and she nibbles it smiling. “Look,” I show her, “there’s holes in my cake where the chocolates were till just now.” “Like craters,” she says. She puts her fingertop in one. “What’s craters?” “Holes where something happened. Like a volcano or an explosion or something.” I put the green chocolate back in its crater and do ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, boom. It flies up into Outer Space and around into my mouth. My birthday cake is the best thing I ever ate. Ma isn’t hungry for any right now. Skylight’s sucking all the light away, she’s nearly black. “It’s the spring equinox,” says Ma, “I remember it said on TV, the morning you were born. There was still snow that year too.” “What’s equinox?” “It means equal, when there’s the same amount of dark and light.” It’s too late for any TV because of the cake, Watch says 08:33. My yellow hoody nearly rips my head off when Ma’s pulling it. I get into my sleep T-shirt and brush my teeth while Ma ties up the trash bag and puts it beside Door with our list that I wrote, tonight it says Please, Pasta, Lentils, Tuna, Cheese (if not too $), O.J., Thanks. “Can we ask for grapes? They’re good for us.” At the bottom Ma puts Grapes if poss (or any fresh fruit or canned). “Can I have a story?” “Just a quick one. What about… GingerJack?” She does it really fast and funny, Gingerjack jumps out of the stove and runs and rolls and rolls and runs so nobody can catch him, not the old lady or the old man or the threshers or

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

You see Matt and Anthony every week. You see everyone every week.” “Not everyone, Nick,” his mother said pointedly. Then her voice changed and turned warmer. “Well, except for this upcoming weekend.” Nick paused at this. It could’ve been a trap. Perhaps his mother suspected something was up with her birthday and was fishing for information. Although it was surprising that she’d come to him—she usually went after Anthony, who had the secret-keeping skills of a four-year-old. “Why? What’s happening this weekend?” he asked nonchalantly. “Oh, nothing much. I just heard something about a sixtieth birthday party your father and you boys are planning for me.” Fucking Anthony. “And don’t go blaming Anthony,” his mother said, quick to protect her youngest. “I’d already heard about it from your aunt Donna before he slipped.” Nick knew what her next question would be before the words left her mouth. “So? Are you bringing a date?” she asked. “Sorry, Ma. It’ll just be me.” “There’s a surprise.” He pulled into the driveway that led to the parking garage of his condo building. “Just a warning, I’m about to pull into the garage—I might lose you.” “How convenient,” his mother said. “Because I had a really nice lecture planned for you.” “Let me guess the highlights: it involved me needing to focus on something other than work, and you dying heartbroken and miserable without grandchildren. Am I close?” “Not bad. But I’ll save the rest of the lecture for Sunday. There’s going to be a lot of gesturing on my part, and the phone doesn’t quite capture the spirit.” Nick smiled. “Shockingly, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you Sunday, Ma.” Her voice softened. “I know how busy you are, Nick. It means a lot to me that you’re coming home.” He knew it did. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

There’s more, Anna. When we first got to California,” she says, “you asked me if I remembered your birthday party.” I nod, picking at a thread on her comforter. “I did remember. Matt was acting like such a space cadet that night after we got home – like he was floating. I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out, but of all the things that he could have been thinking about, you were the last – I mean, my mind just didn’t even go there. You were like our sister.” “But I–” “Wait – let me get this out.” She looks at me hard, her broken wing eyebrow trembling to keep the tears back. “After I brushed my teeth, I walked into his room. He was sitting on his bed, playing with that blue glass necklace he always wore, a big smile on his face. Remember the necklace?” The necklace. “Of course.” “I asked him what was so funny. He jumped a little, not knowing I’d been watching him smile there like a goofy little kid. He said it was nothing – just that he had fun at the party. And I believed him, all the way up until the day I read your journal. That’s when it all made sense. All the times he’d ask me about who you liked at school, or who wanted to take you to whatever dance.” She’s quiet as I digest her story, putting the pieces together to form a complete whole from the missing half that’s haunted me since that night – how did he really feel about me? Was it just one stupid moment, perpetuated a little too long, only to be forgotten as quickly as it came? As soon as he went away to school? “I was in love with him forever – since I was, like, ten,” I confess. “Yeah,” she says. “You both were in love. I know that now. We were all so close, you know? I just didn’t see it coming until I read your – I’m sorry, Anna.” I close my eyes, fighting back the image of her hand on my journal. “It’s okay.

Let’s look again at the example of someone’s birthday that is approaching quickly. Because of things that have happened in the past, we have resentments and feel unwilling to do anything for the birthday. Somehow, it just seems impossible to get out and shop for a birthday present. We resent having to spend the money. The mind conjures up all kinds of justifications: “I don’t have time to shop”; “I can’t forget how mean she was”; “She should apologize to me first.” In this case, two things are operating: clinging to the negative and the smallness in ourselves, and resisting the positive and the greatness in ourselves. The way out of apathy is to see, first of all, that “I can’t” is an “I won’t.” In looking at the “I won’t,” we see that it is there because of negative feelings and, as they come up, they can be acknowledged and let go. It is also apparent that we are resisting positive feelings. These feelings of love, generosity, and forgiveness can be looked at one by one. We can sit down and imagine the quality of generosity and let go resisting it. Is there something generous within ourselves? In this case, we may not be willing to apply it to the birthday person in the beginning. What we can begin to see is the existence of such a quality as generosity within our consciousness. We begin to see that, as we let go resisting the feeling of generosity, there is generosity. We do, in fact, enjoy giving to others under certain circumstances. We begin to remember the positive flood of feeling that comes upon us when we express gratitude and acknowledge the gifts that others have given us. We see that we have really been suppressing a desire to forgive and, as we let go of the resistance to being forgiving, there emerges the willingness to let go of the grievance. As we do this, we stop identifying with our small self and become consciously aware that there is something in us that is greater. It is always there but hidden from view.

to look at Louisa, stroked her cheek, and was rewarded by a dazzling smile. She had been surprised by how light-skinned the child was. Her features were much more like Eva’s than Bill’s. A small turned-up nose, big hazel eyes, and long dark eyelashes. Her golden-brown hair protruded from under the deep peak of her bonnet in a cascade of ringlets. “Do you think she’d come to me?” Cathy asked. “You can try.” Eva handed her over. “She’s got so heavy, she’s making my arms ache!” She gave a nervous laugh as she took the parcel from Cathy and peered at the postmark. “What’s that, Mam?” David craned his neck and gave a short rasping cough. “Is it sweets?” “No, my love.” Eva and Cathy exchanged glances. “It’s just something Auntie Cathy’s brought from the old house. Are you going to show Mikey your flags?” The boy dug eagerly in his pocket, and before long he and Michael were walking ahead, deep in conversation about the paper flags Eva had bought for them to decorate sand castles. Louisa didn’t cry when Eva handed her over. She seemed fascinated by Cathy’s hair, and as they walked along, Cathy amused her by singing “Old MacDonald.” The beach was only a short walk from the station, and it wasn’t long before the boys were filling their buckets with sand. “I hardly dare open it,” Eva said, fingering the string on the parcel. “I know. I was desperate to open it myself.” Cathy looked at her. “I hope you haven’t built up your hopes, too much, Eva. I’m so worried it might be . . . you know.” Eva nodded quickly. “I thought of that too.” She untied the string, her fingers trembling. The paper fell away to reveal a box with the words “Benson’s Baby Wear” written across it in gold italic script. Eva lifted the lid. Inside was an exquisite pink lace dress with matching bootees and a hat. The label said, “Age 2–3 Years.” Beneath it was a handwritten note:   Dear Eva, This is a little something for our baby girl from her daddy. I don’t know the exact date of her birthday, but I wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten. I hope things are going well for you and your husband. Please thank him from me for what he’s doing for our daughter: he’s a fine man and I don’t blame you for wanting to start over with him. I’m back in the army now, traveling around. I’m due to be posted overseas soon, but I don’t know where yet. I’ll write and let you know when I get my new address. It would be terrific if I could have a photograph of her in this little dress, if your husband doesn’t mind. Best wishes to you all, Bill   For several seconds they sat staring at the piece of paper. When Eva spoke, her voice was tight with emotion. “Cathy, he thinks I chose to stay with Eddie!” Cathy nodded, her mind reeling. “Eddie showed me the letter he sent. Bill wouldn’t have known you were in Wales, would he? He would have assumed you and Eddie had already been reunited—that he’d written with your consent on behalf of you both.” She was afraid to look at Eva. “What are you going to do?” Eva’s face had gone very pale. “I don’t know.” She glanced at David, who was jabbing a Welsh flag into a sand castle. “He said he was going to be posted overseas. Suppose they send him to Britain?” Cathy bit her lip. “It could be anywhere, couldn’t it? It could be the other side of the world.” She could see what was going through Eva’s mind. “You think if he came here, you and he could be together without . . .” Her eyes went to the boys. Eva gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod, as if she was afraid someone might see her. “What about Eddie?” “I don’t know!” The tone of her voice made David look up. She put on a smile, which disappeared the

--Birthday Star Atlas-- "Wildest dream, Miss Emily, Then the coldly dawning suspicion— Always at the loss—come day Large black birds overtaking men who sleep in ditches. A whiff of winter in the air. Sovereign blue, Blue that stands for intellectual clarity Over a street deserted except for a far off dog, A police car, a light at the vanishing point For the children to solve on the blackboard today— Blind children at the school you and I know about. Their gray nightgowns creased by the north wind; Their fingernails bitten from time immemorial. We're in a long line outside a dead letter office. We're dustmice under a conjugal bed carved with exotic fishes and monkeys. We're in a slow drifting coalbarge huddled around the television set Which has a wire coat-hanger for an antenna. A quick view (by satellite) of the polar regions Maternally tucked in for the long night. Then some sort of interference—parallel lines Like the ivory-boned needles of your grandmother knitting our fates together. All things ambigious and lovely in their ambiguity, Like the nebulae in my new star atlas— Pale ovals where the ancestral portraits have been taken down. The gods with their goatees and their faint smiles In company of their bombshell spouses, Naked and statuesque as if entering a death camp. They smile, too, stroke the Triton wrapped around the mantle clock When they are not showing the whites of their eyes in theatrical ecstasy. Nostalgias for the theological vaudeville. A false springtime cleverly painted on cardboard For the couple in the last row to sigh over While holding hands which unknown to them Flutter like bird-shaped scissors . . . Emily, the birthday atlas! I kept turning its pages awed And delighted by the size of the unimaginable; The great nowhere, the everlasting nothing— Pure and serene doggedness For the hell of it—and love, Our nightly stroll the color of silence and time.

She’d spent much of her younger life fielding jibes and taunts, and learning to make quick retorts.

Yeah, but I don’t think anybody else made it,” Skelee said. All of a sudden we heard noises coming. “RRRAAAAAGGGHHHRRRR!!!” “Did you hear that? Quick, let’s hide!” I said. We ran down the school hallway, checking all of the classroom doors to see which ones were open. Creepy and I found one at the end of the hall, and Skelee and Slimey jumped into another open classroom close by. “Quick, Creepy, hide in the closet,” I said. I was trying my best to keep Creepy calm. But he was hissing so much. Even his liquid Nitrogen inhaler wasn’t helping. “RRRAAAAAGGGHHHRRRR!!!” The Pumpkin Heads were right at the door. I locked Creepy in the closet, and then I jumped behind the teacher’s desk hoping they wouldn’t find me. The door slowly opened, and I heard two of them come in. “RRRAAAAAGGGHHHRRRR!!!

They shared a look, and Tess felt a wave of emotion. How quickly she'd found an affinity with Isabel, a woman so unlike her, they might have been from different species. Only a short time ago they had been strangers. Now she couldn't imagine not knowing Isabel, her guileless and fragile sister. They shared a birthday, they shared their father's DNA, but the bond now ran deeper than that; it ran as deep as blood and secrets.

Two presents left to deliver, and then I can open the P-38 and go out on the same day I came in. Happy birthday to me! God, I can't wait.

notifications and then actually let her into her messages. There was one from a few hours ago from Dylan, asking how her day was going. She felt guilty that she hadn’t seen it before the board meeting, so she fired off a quick text to him. Awful day. Guess who is now unemployed? Please tell me you have something planned for the birthday of your stressed-out girlfriend that will take us far, far away from Miami. I’m thinking somewhere with the last snow of winter, and a storybook downtown, and no frozen food or legal briefs for an entire two weeks. Ariel pictured Dylan in his office, or maybe in the courtroom, his handsome face and dreamy, blue eyes, the

Finny got his driver’s license on his birthday. Aunt Angelina taught him to drive ages ago. She says he is a good driver, but she is still terrified of him killing himself on the road some night. It’s hard for me to understand how she jumps so quickly from driving to death. Every night, people ride around in cars without dying.

Caramel Celebration Cake Yield: 10–12 servings My mother always made birthdays a big to-do in our family, with balloons hanging from the chandelier and the most gorgeous birthday cakes on crystal cake stands. This caramel cake is certainly celebration worthy! 4 cups cake flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 2-1/4 cups sugar 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 cup butter 1-1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract 3 whole eggs plus 2 egg yolks 2-1/4 cups buttermilk Caramel Icing 1/2 cup butter 1 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup milk 2 cups sifted powdered sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 pinch salt Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Prepare 3 (8-inch) round cake pans by spraying with nonstick baking spray and lining with parchment paper cut rounds to fit bottom of cake pan. Sift cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a mixing bowl; set aside. With a stand mixer, cream together sugar, vegetable oil, butter, and vanilla. Beat well at medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Beat the 3 whole eggs in, 1 at a time, then add in the 2 egg yolks. Fold in the dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Do not overmix the batter. Batter will be thick. Evenly divide batter between prepared pans and bake for 30–35 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow cake to cool 10 minutes before turning onto wire racks to cool completely. Caramel Icing Melt butter and brown sugar together in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Add milk and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and whisk in powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time. Using a hand-held mixer helps to smooth the icing. Add vanilla and salt. Add more powdered sugar for a thicker icing, if desired. As icing cools, it will set, so work quickly to pour and then spread icing over cake. This icing also works well for a sheet cake. If icing begins to set up, warm slightly in the microwave to make icing more spreadable. Note: This will be a thin layer of icing on the cake. If you want a thick layer, double the icing recipe. For layer cakes, lay sheets of wax paper around the cake as you spread on the icing to catch any overflow. TIP: Caramel icing is long known to be difficult, even for the most accomplished bakers. The key is to work quickly and spread the icing before it sets up.

After agreeing to meet in an hour’s time, I returned to my quarters, then sent for Sahdienne. Too exhilarated to wait for her, I entered my bedroom and threw wide my wardrobe, hunting for a gown to suit the occasion. I hesitated before coming to a decision, my hand clutched around the fabric of the garment I was considering. It was my most beautiful gown--the one Steldor had given me for my sister’s seventeenth birthday party. In cream-and-gold fabric that matched my gold-and-pearl tiara, it was striking, with bell sleeves and a daringly cut neckline. It was the obvious choice--just as Steldor had been to be King. Sahdienne arrived at that moment, pulling me from my muddled memories. She had always loved the particular gown I’d chosen and had been enamored with my husband’s extraordinary taste. Now she eagerly assisted with my preparations, draping the beautiful gold-and-pearl necklace Steldor had given me to wear with the dress around my neck and styling my hair into an elegant roll at the back before fixing my tiara in place. With a quick curtsey, she departed and I walked into the parlor where my mother was waiting for me. I had not been informed of her arrival and immediately began to apologize. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but…” I hesitated, for she was studying me with the strangest light in her blue eyes, and I wondered if I were overdressed. “Should I--? I mean, I can change into something else.” “No,” she said, approaching me to smooth my dark hair. “You’re perfect, dear. You’ve grown into such a beautiful woman.” I blushed, slightly embarrassed, but she candidly continued. “Since you and Steldor parted ways, I’ve often wondered if you’re lonely. No person has a whole heart until they find their match.

Dale Carnegie wrote a best selling book, which I highly recommend – How to Win Friends and Influence People. What if he had named the book How to Remember People’s Birthdays and Curb Your Incessant Urge to Argue? Do you think it would have been named the business book of the 20th Century by British Airways?

I turned fifty and decided to take a break. After twenty-five years of working, it seemed like a good idea. Honestly, I was feeling depleted. I still cared about my career and realized, amid a worsening economic climate, that I was lucky to have one. But that appreciation felt more lodged in my head than my heart. One day, United Airlines sent me a card, along with some new luggage tags, offering congratulations on having flown 2 million miles. Quick arithmetic translated all those zeroes into the equivalent of flying from one side of the country to the other every single day—Sundays, holidays, birthdays, sick or well—for more than two years. Maybe the card from United should have offered condolences. It all added up to an abiding fatigue. And a question: Did I want to fly 2 million more miles over the next twenty-five years of my life? Was I having a low-grade midlife crisis? I had no red sports car, reckless affair,

Time travel and parenting are both difficult enough on their own. Combining them . . . ? Let’s just say that when your five-year-old daughter discovers that every day really could be her birthday party, your cupcake and piñata budget is going to need to be revised.”- Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1992   The

People change. It can happen quickly or it can happen slowly, but it will happen. Your job is to see it, recognize it. You gotta talk to each other. You might love blueberry pie and think it’s the best fuckin’ food on earth. Then one day, you decide you want to try lemon meringue. But your husband, he still thinks you like blueberry, so he keeps giving you blueberry every year for your birthday thinking he’s doing the right thing. Your job is to tell him you want to try something different, and his job is to ask if you still like it. It goes both ways. She stopped liking blueberry pie a long time ago, Inky. Maybe if I’d asked, maybe if I hadn’t worked long hours, I’d have noticed. So that’s my advice.

BUILDING RENEWAL INTO YOUR WORKDAY – Tony Schwartz Zeke is a creative director at a large agency. The workday he described when we first met was typical of the managers and leaders I meet in my travels. After six or six and a half hours of sleep—which never felt like enough—Zeke’s alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. each morning. His first move was to take his iPhone off the night table and check his e-mail. He told himself he did this in case something urgent had come in overnight, but the truth was he just couldn’t resist. Zeke tried to get to the gym at least two times a week, but he traveled frequently, and at home he was often just too tired to work out. Once he got to work—around 7:30 a.m. most days—Zeke grabbed a cup of coffee, sat down at his desk, and checked his e-mail again. By then, twenty-five or more new messages were typically waiting in his in-box. If he didn’t have an early meeting, he might be online for an hour or more without once looking up. Zeke’s days were mostly about meetings. They were usually scheduled one after the other with no time in between. As a result, he would race off to the next meeting without digesting what he’d just taken in at the last one. Lunch was something Zeke squeezed in. He usually brought food back to his desk from the cafeteria and worked while he ate. Around two or three in the afternoon, depending on how much sleep he’d gotten the previous night, Zeke began to feel himself fading. Given his company’s culture, taking even a short nap wasn’t an option. Instead, for a quick hit of energy, he found himself succumbing to a piece of someone’s leftover birthday cake, or running to the vending machine for a Snickers bar. With so many urgent demands, Zeke tended to put off any intensive, challenging work for later. By the end of the day, however, he rarely had the energy to get to it. Even so, he found it difficult to leave work with so much unfinished business. By the time he finally did, usually around 7:30 or 8 p.m., he was pretty much running on empty. After dinner, Zeke tried to get to some of the work he had put off earlier in the day. Much of the time, he simply ended up returning to e-mail or playing games online. Either way, he typically stayed up later than he knew he should. How closely does this match your experience? To the extent that it does resonate, how did this happen? Most important, can you imagine working the way you do now for the next ten or twenty years? YOUR CAPACITY IS LIMITED The challenge is that the demand in our lives increasingly exceeds our capacity.

My baby is four years old. I know that calling her a baby is really only a matter of semantics now. It’s true, she still sucks her thumb; I have a hard time discouraging this habit. John and I are finally confident that we already enjoy our full complement of children, so the crib is in the crawlspace, awaiting nieces, nephews, or future grandchildren. I cried when I took it down, removing the screws so slowly and feeling the maple pieces come apart in my hands. Before I dismantled it, I spent long vigils lingering in Annie’s darkened room, just watching her sleep, the length of her curled up small. What seems like permanence, the tide of daily life coming in and going out, over and over, is actually quite finite. It is hard to grasp this thought even as I ride the wave of this moment, but I will try. This time of tucking into bed and wiping up spilled milk is a brief interlude. Quick math proves it. Let me take eleven years - my oldest girl’s age - as an arbitrary endpoint to mothering as I know it now. Mary, for instance, reads her own stories. To her already I am becoming somewhat obsolete. That leaves me roughly 2.373 days, the six and half years until Annie’s eleventh birthday, to do this job. Now that is a big number, but not nearly as big as forever, which is how the current moment often seems. So I tuck Annie in every night. I check on Peter and Tommy, touch their crew-cut heads as they dream in their Star Wars pajamas, my twin boys who still need me. I steal into Mary’s room, awash with pink roses, and turn out the light she has left on, her fingers still curled around the pages of her book. She sleeps in the bed that was mine when I was a child. Who will she grow up to be? Who will I grow up to be? I think to myself, Be careful what you wish for. The solitude I have lost, the time and space I wish for myself, will come soon enough. I don’t want to be surprised by its return. Old English may be a dead language, but scholars still manage to find meaning and poetry in its fragments. And it is no small consolation that my lost letters still manage, after a thousand years, to find their way to an essay like this one. They have become part of my story, one I have only begun to write. - Essay 'Mother Tongue' from Brain, Child Magazine, Winter 2009

Molly the Hoverdog was about ten feet away, behind the couch and her incredibly hot new owner. I held out the candy, which immediately caught Molly’s attention. I tossed the candy on the floor and quickly ducked back out. Molly floated over to it, tilted in midair until her snout was just over the white morsel. She lapped it up. For a moment, nothing. John was about to supply the “it’s not working” when, with a wet, tearing KERRRAAAAACTCH sound, Molly exploded like a meat piñata at a birthday party for very strong, invisible children. A couple of cops behind us cheered. Drake walked up. “What the hell was that?” John answered for me. “It was a TestaMint. Little candies with Bible verses printed on them. You can get them at your local Christian bookstore. We were sort of hoping it would just drive the evil out of her, but . . .” John shrugged, businesslike. These things happen sometimes.

or trepidation, like they wanted to run away as fast as they could once the photo was taken. But Manfred Lange appeared happy to be photographed. His occupation was listed as art historian, and his date of birth as 29 June 1871. All consistent with what Anna knew about him. She flipped the little cardboard folder of his work permit over. Underneath was a membership card to the NSDAP, the Nazi Party. Again, his unapologetic face stared out at her. Member number 149578. So he had been a party member. Anna twinged a little. Had he told her he had been a party member? People with important jobs usually had to be, and it didn’t necessarily mean they were true believers, or even sympathizers. Still, it bothered her. She scanned the room trying not to appear furtive but failing. She quickly flipped pages to see if she could find his Fragebogen, the questionnaire the Americans would have made him complete. But it wasn’t there, of course, because these were the Germans’ files, not the Americans’. Deeply uncomfortable, she flipped back to the party membership card. The date of issue was 20 April 1933. Hitler’s birthday. Manfred Lange had been what the Germans called a March Violet—a late bloomer. March Violets were those who joined the party right after Hitler had seized full authority in March of 1933. Many with elite jobs and who considered themselves to have standing in society, rushed to join the party in order to be on the right side of the power grab. Probably that’s what Manfred Lange had done, too, like millions of others. She closed the folder indicating she was ready to go. She wanted to be out of the building and far away. “Find anything we should know about?” Bender asked, as he held the door for her. “No,” she lied. “Okay. I’ll take your word for it,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat. The air had turned colder and the sky was socked in with dense clouds. “Looks like we’re in the clear for now. At least with the folks working for us.” He shot her a look. “Should you have let me see Herr Lange’s information?” Anna retaliated to deflect any further line of questioning. He smiled as he started the engine. “Probably not,” he said, “but I can’t help it. I’m so nosy.” Six “Where were you? I couldn’t find you at all yesterday.” Cooper was flustered and irritated but a smile appeared when Anna looked up at him from her desk. Things had piled up while she was out with Bender, so she had come in early to catch up. Anna honestly couldn’t remember if Manfred Lange had mentioned being a party member; she could only recall that he was very against the Nazis’ attitude toward art and free speech to the point where the memories had upset him. She hated that these misgivings lived on and probably would forever. One day, Amalia would ask her what she had done in the war. “I went with Bender to Darmstadt. I thought you knew about that,” she said. “He told me he had checked with you.” “That’s right. Of course. Was it a successful trip?” He sat down in the chair next to her table, intent on something. “I think so. He asked me to help him translate some paperwork. He was checking on some personnel? I didn’t find anything.” “Sounds like good news. For us, anyway. We already had to fire some people when their past caught up with them.” “Because they were party members?” “Or worse. Makes sense, but we had to let some very qualified people go. And with all these government types breathing down our necks, we can’t afford a single screw up. Washington is just waiting for something to go wrong so they can scrap this whole operation.” His face sank back into the shadows it had carried for the past weeks. He leaned forward and dropped his face into his hands. Anna felt sorry for him. “That won’t happen,” she said. “You will make sure of it.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. Without looking at her, Cooper took her hand in his and held it in place, his

A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday — euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with. Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews. I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.

A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday — euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with,” she said. “Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews. I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.

A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday — euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with,” she said. “Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews. I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.

We, by contrast, have a risk of death which doubles every eight years. This doesn’t start out so bad: aged 30, your odds of dying that year are less than 1 in 1,000. However, if you keep on doubling something it can start small but, eventually, get very large very quickly: at 65, your risk of death that year is 1 percent; at 80, 5 percent; and by 90, if you make it that far, your odds of not making your 91st birthday are a sobering one in six. There is some evidence that this relationship flattens out after the age of 105 or so, meaning that these exceptionally long-lived people might have technically stopped aging—but, with odds of death around 50 percent per year by then, they might wish it had flattened out slightly sooner.

Most people found Tosi’s dishes to be charming and clever. I thought they were among the most subversive creations in the history of American dining. Tosi grew up in a suburban household in Virginia, feeding her limitless energy with horrendous amounts of Dairy Queen and junk food. While so many pastry chefs devote themselves to mastering the European standards, Tosi did not shun what had shaped her. It helped her stand out. She developed her fluency in Americana into a cheery rebellion at Milk Bar, which started out as a bakery in the back room of Ssäm Bar selling confections like birthday cake truffles and “Compost Cookies.” There were no canelés, macarons, or mille-feuilles on the premises. The point of Milk Bar was to challenge the notion that a great pastry chef had to be a French-trained dude. People caught onto Tosi’s brilliance quickly.

Thus the movie would be a mixture of Hannaford’s smooth, elegantly filmed picture and the raw, quick-cut, cinema verité footage from the birthday party.

If too much time is spent up above, we become uncharacteristically curt with our colleagues, we slip up on our programs, we are rude to waiters, even though one of us (lane seven, little black Speedo, enormous flipper like feet), is a waiter himself. We cease to delight our mates... and even though we resist the urge to descent, it will pass, we tell ourselves. We can feel our panic beginning to rise, as though we were somehow missing out on our own lives. Just a quick dip and everything will be alright. And when we can stand it no longer, we politely excuse ourselves from whatever it is we're doing: discussing this month's book with our book club, celebrating an office birthday, ending an affair, wandering aimlessly up and down the florescent lit aisles of the local Safeway, trying to remember what it is was we came in to buy, (Mallomars, Lorna Doones), and go down for a swim, because there's no place on earth we'd rather be than the pool. Its wide roped off lanes, clearly numbered 1 through 8, its deep, well-designed gutters, its cheerful yellow buoys spaced at pleasingly predictable intervals, its separate, but equal entrances for women and men, the warm ambient glow of its recessed, overhead lights, all provide us with a sense of comfort and order that's missing from our above ground lives.

Tinder would work with Justin’s younger brother to throw a birthday party for one of his popular, hyperconnected friends on campus, and use it to promote Tinder. The Tinder team would do all the work to make it an incredible party. The day of the party, students from USC were getting bused to a luxurious house in LA, where everything had been set up to pull you inside. Sean described how it worked: There was one catch with the party: First, you had to download the Tinder app to get in. We put a bouncer in the house to check that you had done it. The party was great—it was a success, and more importantly, the next day, everyone at the party woke up and remembered they had a new app on their phone. There were attractive people they hadn’t gotten to talk to, and this was their second chance. The college party launch tactic worked. For the Tinder team, this one party created the highest ever one-day spike of downloads, however modest it might seem in retrospect. It’s not just the number that matters here, but that it was “500 of the right people”—Sean would explain to me later. It was a group of the most social, most hyperconnected people on the USC campus, all on Tinder at the same time. Tinder started to work. Matches began to happen, as the students who met each other from the previous night started to swipe through and then chat. Amazingly, 95 percent of this initial cohort started to use this app every day for three hours a day. The Tinder team built one atomic network, but soon figured out how to build the next one—just throw another party. And then another, by going to other schools, and throwing even more parties. Each network was successively easier to start. Tinder quickly reached 4,000 downloads, then 15,000 within a month, and then 500,000 just a month after that—first by replicating the campus launch, but then letting the organic viral growth take over.

Later in the day, Holly frowned at her reflection in the mirror. “This can’t be right!” Holly muttered to herself. She looked like a cross between a panda bear and a raccoon. She had tried to apply a more advanced version of makeup than she was used to, and it was not going well. “Smokey eye, my foot! I look like I have two black eyes.” She had not done the proper shading with her eye shadow, and now her large green eyes were encased with a deep black color that spanned her entire eyelid. “Maybe I should try a different one,” Holly mused aloud. She sat in William’s bedroom at his dresser. She already had on her pretty crushed velvet black dress and a small heart-shaped diamond pendant. It had been William’s birthday gift to her last year. “Let me re-read this article again to see if I can make sense of these instructions.” Holly read her magazine article out loud. “Which Greek Goddess are you? Athena, Venus, or Aphrodite? Check out our makeup tips below to turn heads at your next event!” “Hmmmm, that sounds soooooo good, if only I was better at applying makeup.” She had decided to try their Aphrodite look and had been trying to apply the eyeliner to give her a smoky eye effect. Holly had to wash her face four times already and start over because each time was worse than the last. “Concentrate, Holly, or you’ll be late for the gala. This is your last chance; it’s do or die time!” she warned her reflection in the mirror. “So, it says to put the light grey eyeshadow on the inner one-third of my eyelids. Hmmm, maybe that’s the problem. I don’t know where the inner third is.” She got an idea and went to William’s desk. Looking around, she found a ruler. “Ah-ha! Eureka, I got it!” She went back to her position at his dresser and closed her eyes for a quick, small prayer, then held the ruler up to measure her eye. “Ah-ha! Twenty-one millimeters. So, that means the inner one-third of my eye must be from my nose out seven millimeters . . . right about HERE!” Holly expertly applied the light grey eye shadow to the inner third of her eyelids. “What a big improvement already! Wow! I’m not a panda bear anymore! Ok, one-third down, two-thirds to go . . . I can do this!” Reading further, she said, “Ok, now apply the dark grey eye shadow to the next third of your eye, finishing with the dark brown eye shadow on the outer third of your eyelid.” Holly expertly followed the instructions and sat back in her chair, stunned. She looked beautiful! She had achieved the desired effect, and now her green eyes were enhanced to perfection. “Wow, wow, wow!” Holly felt encouraged to keep going. She read the next instructions. “‘Now, apply blush to your face with an emphasis on contouring your cheekbones.’” “‘Contouring my cheekbones? Who do they think I am, Rembrandt?” Holly said with a groan. Holly gingerly picked up her blush container as if it were about to bite her. She decided another quick prayer wouldn’t go amiss. With a deep breath she muttered, “Ok, I’m going in!” She glanced nervously at the picture in the magazine and tried her hardest to follow it along her cheekbones. “That turned out pretty good!” Holly turned her face this way and that, examining it. It may not have been exactly as in the picture, but the blush now accentuated her beautiful high cheekbones. “Whew! Only the lip left, thank goodness! You got this, Holly!” She encouraged her reflection in the mirror.

> *where Anne Boleyn had been executed.* > > …*The stones beneath the altar were prised up. Jane Boleyn and Catherine Howard were buried quickly next to the mouldering remains of Lady Salisbury, Thomas More, Jane’s husband, and another queen of England…. The few attendees walked out of the little church into the courtyard, where the scaffold still stood. The body of Catherine Howard was left to a vast silence. In all probability, she had not yet reached her twenty-first birthday.

Instead of hiding bodies in mass graves, corpses were triumphantly displayed, as when the Jalisco New Generation (while still part of El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel) dumped the thirty-five bodies on an avenue in Veracruz in September 2011. In reply, the Zetas scattered twenty-six corpses in Jalisco and a dozen in Sinaloa. On closer inspection, the bodies were those of ordinary citizens, not criminals: they were workers and students who had been abducted and murdered and displayed in order to strike fear in the heart of anyone who doubted the murderous resolve of the Zetas... In To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War, John Gibler writes about a related series of bizarre and violent episodes that took place in Torreón, in Coahuila state, bordering Texas: “Who would believe, for example, that the warden of a state prison would let convicted killers out at night and loan them official vehicles, automatic assault rifles, and bulletproof vests, so that they could gun down scores of innocent people in a neighboring state and then quickly hop back over the state line and into prison, behind bars, a perfect alibi. Who would believe that a paramilitary drug-trafficking organization formed by ex−Special Forces of the Mexican Army would kidnap a local cop and torture him into confessing all of the above details about the prisoners’ death squad, videotape the confession, execute the cop on camera with a shot to the heart, and then post the video on YouTube? Who could fathom that the federal attorney general would, within hours of the video-taped confession and execution being posted online, arrest the warden, and then a few days later hold a press conference fully acknowledging that the prisoners’ death squad had operated for months, killing ten people in a bar in January 2010, eight people in a bar in May 2010, and seventeen people at a birthday party in July?” Yet all of this actually happened. During April 2012, when El Chapo was at war with the Zetas, fourteen torsos — armless and legless bodies — were found in a car by the side of the road in Nuevo Laredo. Dead Zetas. Some of the torsos were in the trunk, for which there is a specific narco term: encajuelado (“trunked”; therefore, trunks trunked). Soon after, in Michoacán state, the Zetas met their match in the person of Nazario Moreno (called El Más Loco, the Craziest One), leader of the ruthless Templarios, the Knights Templar cartel, whose recruits were required to eat human flesh—their victims’— as part of their initiation rites. When Moreno was gunned down by the Mexican army in 2014, the Zetas flourished, and remain dominant. But there was a posthumous bonus for the Craziest One: he was promoted to sainthood. In and around his birthplace in Apatzingán, shrines and altars were erected to Saint Nazario, the dead capo represented as a holy figure in robes, venerated by credulous Michoacanos.

With a pair of scissors in my pocket, a bottle of rum in my hand, and Martina, we walked towards Plaza Trippy to go to the alley behind it called Carrer de la Rosa. Martina didn't know what this was all about; I tried to make it a surprise. At the gate, I asked Martina to hold the scissors until I climbed up the wall of the building and cut off the sign. I never had the chance to tell her that I used to do indoor climbing. Just like Adam. It was so dusty and rusty, abandoned and old, that I got dirty. The sign was quite new, or at least it looked new, but it was dustier than I had thought - it must have been up there for years. I cut the zip ties on the four corners, holding the sign to the old metal railings and then I jumped down from the wall to jump into Martina's arms in the tight alley. We were laughing. We went up and left, and up and right a few blocks until we crossed Ferran Street, I think, and finally, I thought we were safe: let's take a picture of the sign and get rid of it. I didn’t want anyone to see us in front of the place or on the busy Carrer Escudellers taking a picture of the 'For Sale' sign. Only Martina knew that we were going to have a club and that it would be right there. I gave my iPhone to Martina to take a picture of me holding the sign. I was so happy. I had my new girlfriend, suddenly from the sky, and she seemed to be “The One”. Celestial. I was wearing my beige suede Adidas shoes with white sole which Sabrina had surprised me with a year earlier on my birthday, my dark green Globe pants, and my black Breach jacket, a black hoodie, smiling ear to ear while holding a dirty sign in front of a store's closed metal shutter decorated with graffiti. After throwing out the sign in the trash can with Martina, I sent Adam the picture. He replied late at night: „:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD” Finally, it took a year to make Adam happy, even though Sabrina wouldn't let me make her happy. I got the place to make 'Aso Golan', the only place it could ever take place; to be one of the largest coffeeshops in Barcelona. I knew it would take another year to quickly fix up the place and pass the inspection before we could open it. I knew that in few years, we would be rich, looking back to the day I made my first order at the Sagrada Familia. Or the night we took off the FOR SALE sign with Martina.

Patrick is with Luke. I’ve left my key on the counter. Keep an eye on my boy for me. Chase sighs, worried that he’s forced Shannon into making a decision she wasn’t comfortable with, but also relieved that Patrick is with his dad at last. And who knows? Maybe she’ll get her shit together and find someone or something that makes her happy. He’ll check in on Patrick tomorrow. Not now. He’s got too much to do. He showers quickly and the cool water brings down his core temperature, making him not want to get out. After dressing, he heads to the kitchen. The house feels eerily quiet as he throws together ham, cheese and some wilting lettuce leaves. It’s a little too quiet. Maybe he liked having house guests. Or maybe he should get a cat. A cat would be someone to talk to in the evenings. He laughs at the thought. “How about you get yourself a damn woman instead?” he says aloud. Settling down to eat in front of the TV, he switches it on and sees the crime scene he just left. It looks busy, but the cameras don’t pick up anything they shouldn’t see. The body has been taken away already.

Kneeling down next to an article of clothing, Kevin looked up to see Christine a few feet away, gathering up one of her extravagant lolita dresses. Looking at her like this, the girl really did look cute, like a fragile porcelain doll. As he continued to watch her, his eyes landed on the black choker around her neck. “Isn’t that the choker that I bought you for your birthday a while back?” Kevin asked. Christine paused in her work. Her hand went to her choker. “A-ah, um, yes, it is. I… well, this is my… my favorite choker, so I like to wear it a lot…” Christine’s cheeks flushed once more, but she at least didn’t seem to be blowing her top. “After you, Iris, and Lilian left, I was really lonely. I hadn’t realized how important all of you were to me until you were gone. Ever since that day, ever since you three went off to Greece, I’ve taken to wearing this, because it reminded me of all the good times we’ve shared together.” That was probably the most honest thing he’d ever heard Christine say since she’d confessed her feelings for him. He’d noticed it before, but Christine really was a tsundere. She rarely ever told anyone what she was really thinking, and she covered up her embarrassment with bluster and violence. Moments like this were rare for her. He could count the number of times where she’d been honest with her feelings on one hand and still have fingers left over. “I’m sorry we left you like that,” Kevin apologized. Christine shook her head. “You don’t need to apologize. I know that you didn’t have much of a choice. Had you not left, then…” Then he, Lilian, and Iris would have put everyone in danger. Back then, Lilian had been targeted by the Shénshèng Clan. One of its members, a three-tailed kitsune named Fan had attacked them during Lindsay’s soccer game. Iris had nearly been killed and Kevin had destroyed an entire school building just to defeat Fan. Christine had been there when it happened, so she understood why they had to leave. “Thank you for being so understanding,” he said. Christine quickly turned her back to him. “T-there’s no need to thank me. We’re friends. I-I was only doing what any good friend would do.” Tsundere until the end, Kevin thought with an amused chuckle. “Then, Christine, I’m very glad that you’re my friend.” Christine squeaked. As she sputtered incoherently, Kevin finally grabbed the article that he’d been kneeling over. Blinking when he realized that it felt different than everything else that he’d picked up thus far, he held the article up to study it. “What is this…?” He trailed off. The object in his hands… was Christine’s panties. “Uh…” Kevin could hear his brain sizzling. “W-what are you doing, idiot!? Don’t stare at those!” Christine leapt at him, and Kevin, too shocked by the object in his hands to do anything, let her tackle him to the ground. The panties were thrown from his hands as his back slammed into the floor. Spots appeared in his vision, but they were soon replaced by Christine’s face, which hovered not two inches from his own. Their noses were almost touching. “C-Christine?” He felt his eyes widen as Christine’s face inched a little closer to his. This was bad. This was a very bad situation. Christine was straddling him, and he could feel her thighs touching him, and her body was pressed against him, and… and… Oh, no… Perhaps it was the result of him still being horny because Christine had interrupted him and Lilian while they were having sex, but Kevin felt his arousal skyrocket. Christine felt it, too, because her eyes went even wider and she looked down. He also looked down. Then he looked back up. Their eyes met. Christine’s face was the brightest blue that he’d ever seen. “I can explain this,” Kevin said calmly. “KYA!” The sound of Christine’s scream was followed by a loud slap.

When my firstborn turned six months old, I decided that this milestone was definitely worth celebrating. And what started as a one-off event quickly became a family tradition: For my kids' half birthdays I make half a cake (it looks like someone just cut a cake down the middle and made the other half disappear), and we sing every other syllable of the "Happy Birthday" song (I'm really good at complicating things, and singing only the first half of the song seemed unfair to the second half). We don't do gifts or a big bash, and we don't blow out candles and make wishes, because wishes should be made only full throttle. We just end the day with a little celebration after dinner, something kind of silly and fun. And cake. Because everything in life should end with sugar.

In the morning, I jumped out of bed with a burst of excitement, the song “Child of Mine” playing in my head. Happy birthday to me! I’d been wanting a baby for the past several years, and finding a donor I felt so comfortable with seemed like the best birthday present ever. Heading to the computer, I smiled at my good fortune—I was really going to do this. I typed in the sperm bank’s URL, found the donor’s profile, and read it all over again. I was just as certain as I’d been the night before that he was The One—the one that would make sense to my child when he or she asked why, of all the possible donors, I chose this guy. I placed the donor in my online shopping cart—just as I might with a book on Amazon—double-checked the order, then clicked Purchase Vials. I’m having a baby! I thought. The moment felt monumental. As the order processed, I planned what I had to do next: Make an appointment for the insemination, buy prenatal vitamins, put together a baby registry, get the baby’s room set up. Between thoughts, I noticed that my order was taking a while to complete. The rotating circle on my screen, known as the “spinning wheel of death,” seemed to be spinning for an unusually long time. I waited, waited some more, and finally tried using the back button in case my computer was crashing. But nothing happened. Finally, the spinning wheel of death disappeared and a message popped up: Out of stock. Out of stock? I figured there must be some computer glitch—maybe when I pressed the back button?—so I speed-dialed the sperm bank and asked for Kathleen, but she was out and I got transferred to a customer-service rep named Barb. Barb looked into the matter and determined that this was no glitch. I’d selected a very popular donor, she said. She went on to explain that popular donors went quickly and that, while the company tried to “restock” their “inventory” often, there was a six-month hold for it so it could get quarantined and tested. Even when the inventory was made available, she said, there still might be a long wait, because some people had placed it on back order. As Barb spoke, I thought of how Kathleen had called just yesterday. Now it occurred to me that maybe she’d suggested this donor to several women. Like me, maybe many women had bonded with Kathleen over her honest appraisals of semen.

Wouldn’t you like to see what I bought for you? Aren’t you just a little curious?” He was, but he couldn’t let her know that. She’d pounce on that weakness and use it against him. “How about we make a deal,” she proposed as they neared his office, which she knew he had every intention of locking himself in. “No deals, Taryn.” “That’s a shame,” she said as she slid down his back, exhaling a heavy sigh. “It means I went to Victoria’s Secret for nothing.” She watched in satisfaction as he stopped still with his hand on the doorknob. “Victoria’s Secret?” he repeated without turning. “Yeah, but never mind.” She went to return to the kitchen, but then he spoke. “Out of curiosity…” She twirled to see that he was still facing the office door. “Well, I bought this kinky little baby-doll, all black lace like the one I tried on that time when I was tormenting you.” He cleared his throat. “Black lace?” “Yeah.” She took a few steps toward the kitchen, knowing what was coming next. “What was this deal you had in mind?” he called after her as he finally turned. He was well aware that she had played him, but only an idiot would miss out on this. She faced him and shrugged. “I was just going to propose that if you try to enjoy yourself and celebrate your birthday with us, then later—for one whole hour—I’ll let you do whatever you want to me. I’ll be kind of like your sex toy.” His cock jerked and quickly began to harden. “Anything I want?

A Tribute to my Daughter well well well....twenty nine years have come and gone and oh so too quickly.... I tearfully remember my very first child and the dramatic night you came into our lives...you changed us forever Xio...you Blessed our lives....I remember also the first day you looked me straight in my eyes.. you were being held in my right hand after a bath..you turned your head towards me and stared at me like you had never done before...the instant that happened I knew you were acknowledging the fact that I was yours...that's how that look felt... you placed the stamp of your soul in my hands... I knew in that moment that my role as a Father had truly begun... that look told me so... you made it very clear.....no person on this planet ever touched my very soul the way my baby girl did with that first stare..the beautiful brown eyes.. the inquisitive little look that quickly turned in to a very meaningful stare... I actually had to take a sharp breath....I was hooked...hooked for life... now you have grown from the baby we so loved and took care of... the little girl we watched grow...the smart little teenager you became.. I remember our lovely trip to England and Paris.. somehow that trip was meant to be...just the two of us...my little girl and me....you were so very young....I remember the flight...the landing...the excitement in your face...the look in your eyes...and somehow on that trip as we walked along the Champs-Elysees in Paris....I caught a glimpses of the young lady that was in you... I saw the big heart, the loving smiles. the kindness you so openly show... and here we are now.. many years later....you have matured into a very fine young woman.. a bright future... a work of art. At 58 I have met many souls, thousands I think... people of so many types and personalities...so many differences, in so many different places.. yet every time I look at you and especially when I see that beautiful smile...I think to myself... God is real...and man oh man He's really...really....good. I wish you a wonderful Birthday Xio and many many more to come....God Bless you Xio... God Bless you. Love you this much, Dad

Lorenzo steps closer, his body a breath away from mine as he whispers, "Trust me?" I have no idea what he's asking, but I nod because what else am I gonna do? We're about to go to dinner and pretend like we're happy newlyweds with someone who could blow up my entire social circle, and likely my professional life, with a single well-placed word. Lorenzo walks me backward until my back hits the wall. I gasp, surprised. But he's not done. "Trust me," he orders softly. And with that, he picks me to straddle him and slams my back against the door with a thump. It rattles loudly behind me. "Fuck, Abigail, Quick, mia rosa. Come on my cock before your friends get here or they're going to hear me fucking you deep and hard. I want your cum on me and my cum in you while we sit at this prim and proper dinner, wife." I gasp, both at his filthy talk and the ridge of his cock pressing against my core. "Ungh." I can't make words, am barely making incoherent sounds, and Lorenzo lifts one hand from my thigh to hold my head still. He meets my eyes, one of his brows lifted pointedly. If I couldn't feel his cock, I wouldn't even know what this is doing to him. For all the fire rushing through my body and turning my brain to melted goo, he's clear-eyed and has a plan. I blink and realize what he's doing. Emily needs to think we're newlyweds, and what do newlyweds do non-stop? Fuck. Now that I've caught on, he winks at me and I smile back. He thrusts against me and I bounce on the door. "Yes, hard ... just like that," I moan. He grunts, finding a pace that is actually doing a lot for me even though I just came in the shower a bit ago. I'd be embarrassed at the wet heat of my core, but his cock jumps against me. I like that he's carried away too as he dry humps me, only hinting at what we're playacting. "Take it. Take me, Abigail," he hisses through clenched teeth. Is that for effect or is he holding the reins that tightly? "Yes, my Italian Stallion!" I cry out, clawing at his shoulders for purchase. Confusion mars his face as he mouths, "Italian Stallion?" I shake me head and whisper back, "I don't know, it just came out." He grins like that's the funniest thing he's ever heard and goes back to thrusting against me with renewed furor. "That's it, mia rosa. Are you going to come for me?" Oh shit. I am. Like I am ... for real. Any sane, rational, reasonable person would tilt their hips and move away from the power of his thrusts to save a little face. Do I? Absolutely not. If anything, I'm humping him back, riding him like the pony at my sixteenth birthday party. Don't laugh ... it was an amazing blowout. Like I'm about to have ... "Yes, yes. Right there Lorenz-ohh!" He pulls me tight against him, his cock grinding against my clit as he grunts through several short strokes and says something I don't understand in Italian. Is he? Did he? As I float back to Earth and realize what just happened, there's another knock on the door. This one is harder and louder. "Hey, Abi! We have reservations, you know?" Emily yells through the wood, literally inches away from where I just loudly came on Lorenzo's cock for real.

message. Include information about a sale, or a new product. You just came across an article that says, “People who have hot tubs are so relaxed that they outlive poor slobs who do not have hot tubs.” Include that along with a friendly message about how you’re offering free delivery this week only! I follow all my clients on social media. I also save all of their birthdays in my calendar. The other day I noticed that Greta Lambert’s son James had just celebrated his tenth birthday. It was an opportunity for an easy, friendly follow-up message. I shot her an email, “Wow. James is growing up so quickly, your apartment must be feeling small.” Greta responded, “Ryan, good to hear from you, it does feel small!” Now she’s a warm lead and I’ll follow up next week with some listings in her area.

The crescent kick is one of the most difficult kicks to master in Tae Kwon Do, but when executed properly, it is one of the most dangerous.  Detective Sergeant Jamie Johansson had been practising it for nearly six years, and despite being only five-foot-six, she could comfortably slam her heel into the ear of someone that was over six feet. And now she had it down to a science. She knew she couldn’t do enough damage with a punch to put someone down if she had to, but a well-executed crescent kick would do the job. Especially from her lightweight trail boots. Her partner made fun of her for wearing them — said that detectives shouldn’t be wearing hiking boots, especially not in the city, but they were tough and she was as fast in them as she was in her trainers. Which she thought made them a lot more suited to tracking down scumbags than Roper’s black leather Chelsea boots.  He disagreed. She didn’t really care.  Smoking thirty a day meant that he wasn’t going to be doing much running anyway. ‘Come on,’ Cake said, jerking the pad. ‘Again. Like you mean it.’ She flicked her head, throwing sweat onto the matt, wound up, lifted her leg, snapped her knee back, and then lashed out. Her shin smashed into the training pad with a dull thwap and she sank into her knees, panting.  Cake clapped them together and grinned with wide, crooked teeth. ‘Good job,’ he said. ‘You’re really getting some power into those, now. But make sure to ice that foot, yeah?’ She caught her breath quickly and stood up, nodding, strands of ash-blonde hair sticking to her forehead, the thick plait running between her lithe shoulders coming loose. ‘Sure,’ she said, measuring her trainer. Cake was six-two and twice her weight. He was Windrush, in his fifties, and ran a mixed martial arts gym just near Duckett’s Green. He was a retired boxer turned trainer that scored his nickname after winning a fight in the late nineties on his birthday. When the commentator asked what he was going to do to celebrate, he said that he was going to eat a birthday cake. Everyone thought that was funny, and it stuck. He had a pretty bad concussion at the time, which probably contributed to the answer. But there was no getting away from it now.  He pulled the pads off his forearms and rubbed his eyes. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, looking over at the clock on the wall. It was just before seven.  He yawned and stretched, cracking his spine. The gym wouldn’t open until midday to the public, but he lived upstairs in a tiny studio, and he and Jamie had an arrangement. It kept him fit and active, and she could train one-on-one. Just how she liked it. She paid her dues of course, slid him extra on top of the monthly for his time. But he said that

Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of a slippery slope and find, instead, a cliff. Maybe that’s what happened to them that night or maybe, bless their hearts, they had spent a great deal of energy keeping it together—since my tenth birthday, since the seizure, since the beauty convention or the move to Columbus or the first time they met. Who knows? It’s amazing, either way, how quickly you can become a thing you’d never thought of being and may not even want to be.

next to things that you need to do. Draw an x over the dot to mark to-dos that are complete. Write the less-than symbol (<) over the dot to show that a task has been scheduled, or write the greater-than symbol (>) over it to show that the task has been migrated—aka you didn’t finish it today/ this week/ this month, so you moved it to another day’s/ week’s/ month’s list. You can migrate the same item over and over and over again until you finally complete it (or until you finally say, “Wow, this is never going to happen,” and let it go). Not that I’d know anything about that. P.S. Notice how you can easily turn either of these symbols into an x once the task is complete. Add a caret (^) over the dot when you’ve started a task. (Because even if you don’t finish it, it’s nice to feel like you accomplished something.) Use a dash for quick thoughts, notes, observations, or smaller events. Draw an open box to mark big events (appointments, birthdays, meetings, anniversaries, etc.).