Resume About Me Quotes

What did you tell them?” “I don't recall. I think I mentioned your discipline and ability to follow orders. I may have said something about you being a team player.” Derek emitted a strangled cough. “Why?” I demanded. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Curran resumed hammering. “I'm sorry,” I said into the phone, sticking me finger into my other ear so I could hear. “His Majesty tends to exaggerate things. I'm not a team player. I'm undisciplined and I have a problem with authority. Also, the Beast Lord can't hammer for shit.” On the roof Derek was laughing his head off.

Gabriel: Bethany lacks understanding about the ways of the world. She still has much to learn and that makes her vulnerable." Beth: "Do you have to make me sound like a full-time babysitting project?" Xavier: "I happen to be an experienced babysitter. I can show you my resume if you'd like.

My dearest Emma," said he, "for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved Emma -- tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said." She could really say nothing. "You are silent," he cried, with great animation; "absolutely silent! at present I ask no more." Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling. "I cannot make speeches, Emma," he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing. "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it. Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover. But you understand me. Yes, you see, you understand my feelings and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.

I cannot make speeches, Emma:”—he soon resumed, and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing. “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.

Bigfoot understood — as I came to understand — that character is far more important than skills or employment history. And he recognized character — good and bad — brilliantly. He understood, and taught me, that a guy who shows up every day on time, never calls in sick, and does what he said he was going to do, is less likely to fuck you in the end than a guy who has an incredible resume but is less than reliable about arrival time. Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don't have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they're going to do — and everyone else.

But the fantasy kingdom and trappings of success soon lost their luster, as I discovered that the most prestigious and remunerative of my resume's way stations was also the most tedious and unfulfilling I had ever experienced. This paradox only made me more morose about modernity. Why was I going to watch my hairline recede in front of two-thousand-line spreadsheets staring at me from cold, glowing monitors? Why was everyone in my office apparently so happy to be spending so many hours there, when the things they really cared about - people, pets, pastimes - were all relegated to a few photographs on their desks? That seemed to be the formula: spend the best years of your life in an office with photos of what you really care about.

My Sadness is Deeper than Yours My sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don’t care about anybody else’s problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I’ve seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don’t expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don’t talk to me about failure. You don’t know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you’re strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I’m ten times the failure you’ll ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expect to be rewarded for a struggle that produced nothing. I want the neglect, the lack of acknowledgment. And I want the bitterness that comes with it too.

You speak as if you envied him." "And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my envy." Emma could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence of Harriet, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if possible. She made her plan; she would speak of something totally different—the children in Brunswick Square; and she only waited for breath to begin, when Mr. Knightley startled her, by saying, "You will not ask me what is the point of envy.—You are determined, I see, to have no curiosity.—You are wise—but I cannot be wise. Emma, I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment." "Oh! then, don't speak it, don't speak it," she eagerly cried. "Take a little time, consider, do not commit yourself." "Thank you," said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not another syllable followed. Emma could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in her—perhaps to consult her;—cost her what it would, she would listen. She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it; she might give just praise to Harriet, or, by representing to him his own independence, relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be more intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his.—They had reached the house. "You are going in, I suppose?" said he. "No,"—replied Emma—quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which he still spoke—"I should like to take another turn. Mr. Perry is not gone." And, after proceeding a few steps, she added—"I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you pain.—But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation—as a friend, indeed, you may command me.—I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think." "As a friend!"—repeated Mr. Knightley.—"Emma, that I fear is a word—No, I have no wish—Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?—I have gone too far already for concealment.—Emma, I accept your offer—Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend.—Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?" He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression of his eyes overpowered her. "My dearest Emma," said he, "for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved Emma—tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said."—She could really say nothing.—"You are silent," he cried, with great animation; "absolutely silent! at present I ask no more." Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling. "I cannot make speeches, Emma:" he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.—"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.—You hear nothing but truth from me.—I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.—Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover.—But you understand me.—Yes, you see, you understand my feelings—and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.

To Arendt’s point about post-revolution stability deriving from pre-revolutionary experience in self government, it’s worth remembering that two of Henry’s less chatty fellow burgesses became the first and third presidents of the United States. Andrew O’Shaughnessy, referring to the masterminds of the 2013 government shutdown and no doubt alluding to the freshman senator who was its ringleader, told me, “Experience is terribly important. You’ll notice that the congressmen who want to hold up the government are all junior people and new to the game. And of course they will say, ‘Oh, it’s Washington cynicism, where they all compromise and work out backroom deals.’ But that’s actually how democracy works.” Which is exactly how government operations resumed on October 17, 2013: a bipartisan group of old-school senators with the combined age of Stonehenge started hashing out a bargain drafted by third-term moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine, who, prior to her election sixteen years earlier, had spent twelve years working behind the scenes as a legislative aide to her predecessor.

Tired of his lack of understanding, she asked him for an unusual birthday gift: that for one day he would take care of the domestic chores. He accepted in amusement, and indeed took charge of the house at dawn. He served a splendid breakfast, but he forgot that fried eggs did not agree with her and that she did not drink café con leche. Then he ordered a birthday luncheon for eight guests and gave instructions for tidying the house, and he tried so hard to manage better than she did that before noon he had to capitulate without a trace of embarrassment. From the first moment he realized he did not have the slightest idea where anything was, above all in the kitchen, and the servants let him upset everything to find each item, for they were playing the game too. At ten o’clock no decisions had been made regarding lunch because the housecleaning was not finished yet, the bedroom was not straightened, the bathroom was not scrubbed; he forgot to replace the toilet paper, change the sheets, and send the coachmen for the children, and he confused the servants’ duties: he told the cook to make the beds and set the chambermaids to cooking. At eleven o’clock, when the guests were about to arrive, the chaos in the house was such that Fermina Daza resumed command, laughing out loud, not with the triumphant attitude she would have liked but shaken instead with compassion for the domestic helplessness of her husband. He was bitter and offered the argument he always used: “Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you if you tried to cure the sick.” But it was a useful lesson, and not for him alone. Over the years they both reached the same wise conclusion by different paths: it was not possible to live together in any way, or love in any other way, and nothing in this world was more difficult than love.

In wrapping things up the writer had a choice: the "happy" ending in which the two former enemies are rescued and we can imagine them going forward with their lives as friends the "realistic" ending in which they are rescued but immediately resume their quarrel: or the cruelly ironic ending where fate takes a hand. The class was about evenly divided among the three endings. For Me though there was no choice the writer absolutely had to go with the ironic one. What would be the point I argued of a story like that with a happy ending The two men walking off into the sunset together and unharmed isnt an ending-it's a cop-out.

When Mrs. Rose goes to check in with “the woman” about dinner, I pull out my phone and start tapping. “Potpourri,” I say aloud. “Scribbly paintings. Creepy Hummel figurines of peasant children doing chores.” Nicholas gives me a wary look. “What are you doing?” “Taking notes on how to make our house more enticing to you. You adore this one so much that you never want to leave, so I’m working out how to replicate the magic.” I resume my phone tapping. “Bouquets of flowers bestowed by loved ones. Hmm, I’ll have to find some loved ones.

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

To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Uncommon Prostitues I have nothing to say about prostitues (other than you'd make a terrible prostitute,the profession is much too unclean), I only wanted to type that. Isn't it odd we both have to spend Christmas with our fathers? Speaking of unpleasant matters,have you spoken with Bridge yet? I'm taking the bus to the hospital now.I expect a full breakdown of your Christmas dinner when I return. So far today,I've had a bowl of muesli. How does Mum eat that rubbish? I feel as if I've been gnawing on lumber. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: Christmas Dinner MUESLY? It's Christmas,and you're eating CEREAL?? I'm mentally sending you a plate from my house. The turkey is in the oven,the gravy's on the stovetop,and the mashed potatoes and casseroles are being prepared as I type this. Wait. I bet you eat bread pudding and mince pies or something,don't you? Well, I'm mentally sending you bread pudding. Whatever that is. No, I haven't talked to Bridgette.Mom keeps bugging me to answer her calls,but winter break sucks enough already. (WHY is my dad here? SERIOUSLY. MAKE HIM LEAVE. He's wearing this giant white cable-knit sweater,and he looks like a pompous snowman,and he keeps rearranging the stuff on our kitchen cabinets. Mom is about to kill him. WHICH IS WHY SHE SHOULDN'T INVITE HIM OVER FOR HOLIDAYS). Anyway.I'd rather not add to the drama. P.S. I hope your mom is doing better. I'm so sorry you have to spend today in a hospital. I really do wish I could send you both a plate of turkey. To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Re: Christmas Dinner YOU feel sorry for ME? I am not the one who has never tasted bread pudding. The hospital was the same. I won't bore you with the details. Though I had to wait an hour to catch the bus back,and it started raining.Now that I'm at the flat, my father has left for the hospital. We're each making stellar work of pretending the other doesn't exist. P.S. Mum says to tell you "Merry Christmas." So Merry Christmas from my mum, but Happy Christmas from me. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: SAVE ME Worst.Dinner.Ever.It took less than five minutes for things to explode. My dad tried to force Seany to eat the green bean casserole, and when he wouldn't, Dad accused Mom of not feeding my brother enough vegetables. So she threw down her fork,and said that Dad had no right to tell her how to raise her children. And then he brought out the "I'm their father" crap, and she brought out the "You abandoned them" crap,and meanwhile, the WHOLE TIME my half-dead Nanna is shouting, "WHERE'S THE SALT! I CAN'T TASTE THE CASSEROLE! PASS THE SALT!" And then Granddad complained that Mom's turkey was "a wee dry," and she lost it. I mean,Mom just started screaming. And it freaked Seany out,and he ran to his room crying, and when I checked on him, he was UNWRAPPING A CANDY CANE!! I have no idea where it came from. He knows he can't eat Red Dye #40! So I grabbed it from him,and he cried harder, and Mom ran in and yelled at ME, like I'd given him the stupid thing. Not, "Thank you for saving my only son's life,Anna." And then Dad came in and the fighting resumed,and they didn't even notice that Seany was still sobbing. So I took him outside and fed him cookies,and now he's running aruond in circles,and my grandparents are still at the table, as if we're all going to sit back down and finish our meal. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY FAMILY? And now Dad is knocking on my door. Great. Can this stupid holiday get any worse??

It‘s utterly astounding that every time I get knocked down God’s mercy compassionately raises me to my feet; His grace thoroughly brushes off every trace of assorted filth I accumulated in the fall, His word precisely recalibrates my direction to insure the success of a journey resumed, and once all of that is completed He gently leans over and whispers, “How about another run?

She pushed away from me and started pacing while she resumed her yelling about all the reasons we wouldn’t work. I found it adorable. I had never felt better about a decision in my entire life.

when i go to bed i go to bed with the lights on" Every morning I look up at the moon and I think You are a kiddie-pool and I will drown in you. I think about field trips and cold cuts. I think about dividends and other words I don’t understand. I make five hundred lunches in advance. I want to be prepared. I want new shoes. I want them to be waterproof and unforgettable. I want the kind of resume that takes home all the prizes and a salary commensurate with thunderstorms. I want to believe that there are people in this world whose lives are the size of houses and their bills are paid on time and when they see birds in the sky they think that’s a nice thing to see. In my free time I clip coupons and put them in my wallet where I forget to redeem them and this gnaws at me day in and day out and when I close my eyes I can feel my heart and it is trembling.

Why is it their business? They expect me to go sit at their fucking picnic—alone—and watch them with their happy fucking little families, and I’m supposed to pretend like the one person in this town I give a damn about doesn’t even exist?” “Uh….” I couldn’t really think of anything to say to that. I couldn’t believe that he had said any of it and was pretty sure he wouldn’t have on any normal day. But it didn’t matter. He was still talking, and the pull on the back of my head had resumed.

She didn't get any further because he didn't just stand there letting her aim missiles at him. He easily dodged the first one, and the second went over his head as he dived at her, pushing her back down onto the couch with himself landing on top of her. After she got her breath back from the impact, she shrieked, "Get off of me, you clumsy clod!" "My dear girl, there was nothing clumsy involved in the position you now find yourself. It was quite intentional, I do assure you." "Get off of me anyway!" "So you can resume your spat of violence? No, no. Violence is not going to be part of our relationship. I could've sworn I already mentioned that." "And what do you call squashing me like this?" "Prudence, actually." And then he paused, his eyes getting greener by the second as he stared down at her. "On the other hand, I'd also call it quite nice." Her eyes narrowed. "If you're thinking about kissing me, I wouldn't advise it," she warned. "No?" "No." He sighed. "Ah, well." But then a half grin formed as he added, "I don't always take good advice." -Kelsey & Derek

Anything Bunny wrote was bound to be alarmingly original, since he began with such odd working materials and managed to alter them further by his befuddled scrutiny, but the John Donne paper must have been the worst of all the bad papers he ever wrote (ironic, given that it was the only thing he ever wrote that saw print. After he disappeared, a journalist asked for an excerpt from the missing young scholar's work and Marion gave him a copy of it, a laboriously edited paragraph of which eventually found its way into People magazine). Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable. We never understood how this fatal connection had established itself: Henry blamed it on Men of Thought and Deed, but no one knew for sure. A week or two before the paper was due, he had started showing up in my room about two or three in the morning, looking as if he had just narrowly escaped some natural disaster, his tie askew and his eyes wild and rolling. 'Hello, hello,' he would say, stepping in, running both hands through his disordered hair. 'Hope I didn't wake you, don't mind if I cut on the lights, do you, ah, here we go, yes, yes…' He would turn on the lights and then pace back and forth for a while without taking off his coat, hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. Finally he would stop dead in his tracks and say, with a desperate look in his eye: 'Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism.' 'I'm sorry. I don't know what that is.' 'I don't either,' Bunny would say brokenly. 'Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see.' He would resume pacing. 'Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it.' 'Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word.' 'Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe.' 'Is it in the dictionary?' 'Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean' – he made a picture frame with his hands – 'the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?' And so it would go, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. 'This is a nice paper, Bun -,' Charles said cautiously. 'Thanks, thanks.' 'But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?' 'Oh, Donne,' Bunny had said scoffingly. 'I don't want to drag him into this.' Henry refused to read it. 'I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really,' he said, glancing over the first page. 'Say, what's wrong with this type?' 'Triple-spaced it,' said Bunny proudly. 'These lines are about an inch apart.' 'Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?' Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. 'Looks kind of like a menu,' he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence 'And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.' We wondered if he would fail.

I cannot make speeches, Emma," he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing. "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it. Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover. But you understand me. Yes, you see, you understand my feelings and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.

In the forty minutes I watched the muskrat, he never saw me, smelled me, or heard me at all. When he was in full view of course I never moved except to breathe. My eyes would move, too, following his, but he never noticed. Only once, when he was feeding from the opposite bank about eight feet away did he suddenly rise upright, all alert- and then he immediately resumed foraging. But he never knew I was there. I never knew I was there, either. For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared; it seems now almost as though, had I been wired to electrodes, my EEG would have been flat. I have done this sort of thing so often that I have lost self-consciousness about moving slowly and halting suddenly. And I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, “When you walk across the field with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their souls come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.

And more to the point, I have no idea what I want to do. It shouldn't be a surprise. I've had years to think about it. That and just the other day I was pestering Wolf about what he wanted to do--talk about the pot calling the kettle black. But that's just it, I guess. I've never had to think about it. I have very diligently kept all of my options open. The AP classes, the killer GPA, the SAT scores in the 99th percentile, the varsity letters from swim team, the debate club, the fundraising... I've taken on everything and succeeded at it. There is not one weak spot that can be pointed to in my resume, not a single thing that would make an administrator say, "Yes, but what about her..." Except maybe this. Except the part where it's suddenly clear to me why I've been struggling so much with my college essays, with articulating who I am in so few words. How can a person even know who they are if they don't know what they want?

He ran his hands along my shoulders, the ridges of my collarbones. His fingers sank into the tense muscles of my upper back, massaging in deep, sensual circles that caused a moan to escape my mouth. "You deserve to be taken care of," he said, and then his hand was on my hip, directing me. "Here. Let me do this properly." I turned around, scooting back until I was nestled in between his thighs, and he resumed his slow ministrations, his thumbs digging into the space between my shoulder blades. "Tell me if I'm too rough," he said quietly into my ear, but I could only shake my head. It felt amazing. He ran his nails down my back, the sensation sending a delicious crackle down my spine, before calming the activated nerve endings with a rub all the way down to my lower back. His fingers hooked in the waistband of my leggings, my underwear, before tugging at the stretchy material of the leggings. "Now these," he said. "Only these." I had to stand up to comply with that command, rolling the leggings down from my hips and stepping out of them. It gave me a chance to see Sam's face, his eyes hooded, watching me. Any questions I may have had about whether this was only about my pleasure were answered in that look, and further by the hard ridge of his jeans against my ass when I took my place back between his thighs. I half expected him to touch me in a more explicit way than a massage of the shoulders, but he simply returned to the slow kneading of my back, no more improper than what you might ask a friend to do, albeit with fewer clothes. It made my body scream to be touched---- I wanted his hands everywhere, on my breasts and in my mouth and in between my legs. I ground my ass against his erection through his jeans, trying to send him a message. "Shh," Sam said against my ear, less a command to be quiet and more a soft sound of indulgence. "We have time. We have all night.

Debra pointed her purses lips in Max’s direction. “Overnight guests are forbidden. No exceptions.” “Did you just have the audacity to judge me?” Gina blocked the nurse’s route to the door. “Without knowing the least little thing about me?” Debra lifted an eyebrow. “Well, I have seen your underwear, dear.” “Exactly,” Gina said. “You’ve seen my underwear—not my personality profile, or my resume, or my college transcript, or—” “If you think for one second,” the nurse countered, “that anything about this situation is even remotely unique—” “That’s enough,” Max said. Gina, of course, ignored him. “I don’t just think it, I know it,” she said. “It’s unique because I’m unique, because Max is unique, because—” Debra finally laughed. “Oh, honey, you are so . . . young. Here’s a tip I don’t usually bother to tell girls like you: If I find one pair of panties on the floor, it’s only a matter of time before I find another. And I hate to break it to you, hon, but the girl who comes out of the bathroom next time, well . . . She isn’t going to be you.” “First of all,” Gina said grimly, “I’m a woman, not a girl. And second, Grandma . . . You want to bet it’s not going to be me?” “I said, that’s enough,” Max repeated, and they both turned to look at him. About time. He was used to clearing his throat and having an entire room jump to full attention. “Ms. Forsythe, you took my blood pressure—you have the information you needed, good day to you, ma’am. Gina . . .” He wanted to tell her to untwist her panties and put them back on, but he didn’t dare. “Sit,” he ordered instead, motioning to the desk chair that could be pulled beside the bed. “Please,” he added when Nurse Evil smirked on her way out the door.

Then we’re kissing right there in front of everyone. And nothing else seems to matter. Certainly not etiquette, or what anyone else thinks. It’s only his lips on mine, the pressure gentle. It’s only us. And I can’t stop— Which is when Derrick arrives out of thin air and careens into my shoulder in a mess of wings and limbs. “Hellooooo! Don’t mind me, I’m just interrupting your brazen cuddle to steal the lady for a few minutes.” Oh, damnation, not now. I’m really regretting not giving Derrick that extra five minutes. “Derrick,” I say through clenched teeth. I step back from Kiaran and try to control the pixie’s wriggling body in my hair. “Not—” “My god.” Derrick collapses on my shoulder. “I am full of pie. I can barely even move my wings. I—” He squints over at Kiaran and smiles in delight. “Oh, hulloooooo, villainous wastrel!” Kiaran is clearly not impressed. “You’ve a bit of pastry on your jacket.” Derrick swipes at the morsel, snatches it, and eats it. “Was just saving a wee snack for later.” He giggles. For god’s sake. I look pleadingly at Kiaran. “Just . . . save that thought. Don’t go anywhere.” I’d like to resume the kissing. “I’ll be right back—” “Kiaraaaaaaaaaan.” Derrick giggles. “Or would you prefer I keep villainous wastrel? I never asked.” Kiaran arches an eyebrow. “I suppose that depends. Would you prefer pain in my arse?” Derrick bursts into laughter. “Arse! Aileana. He said arse.” “Hell,” I mutter. “Will you excuse me for a moment?” I don’t wait for Kiaran’s response. I take Derrick with me to the lift and don’t say anything until I reach the fourth floor. “Let me just say, if someone gave you honey, I’ll—” “No, no, no,” Derrick says, gliding off my shoulder. He now looks suspiciously lucid. “You said to save you after twenty-five minutes. So I did.” “I said to save me if I was around Daniel and in obvious distress.” Not when I’m kissing someone in obvious delight. “Firstly, I was the one in distress watching you kiss Kiaran because ughhhh.” Derrick wags a finger at me. “And secondly, you never said anything about distress, you said—” “Forget what I said.” I narrow my eyes. “Are you telling me that down there was all an act?” He grins. “I would have been perfect in the theater, wouldn’t you say?” “Good heavens,” I murmur. At least I don’t have to deal with a drunk pixie. “Let’s just check the wards, all right

Again the king sighed. "That is a different matter." "Fine," Dragon said promptly. "I shall solve your problem for you." He made to rise. Rycca did not mask her response. She grabbed hold of his wrist with both her hands and yanked hard. "Sit down," she said emphatically, and then just to soften it, "I pray you,my lord." After a moment's shock, Alfred laughed. He shook his head ruefully. "You three must know how men envy you? The beauty of your wives is spoken of with awe, yet I am pleased to see they are not lacking in spirit either." "Mayhap too much spirit," Dragon growled, but he did not look truly angry, merely frustrated. "Your killing Wolscroft will only cause more trouble," Alfred said. "No, this must be handled within the law." Slowly, Dragon resumed his seat but he looked in no way pleased about it. Rycca returned her hands to her lap and tried hard to look abashed. He wasn't fooled but he did reach over, take hold of her chair, and haul it up close to his so that he could rest an arm around her shoulders. A rather heavy arm, she thought, reminded of his strength and will.Not that she minded. Above all, she wanted him near her,not off risking his life against her father.

Finally he would stop dead in his tracks and say, with a desperate look in his eye: “Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism.” “I’m sorry. I don’t know what that is.” “I don’t either,” Bunny would say brokenly. “Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That’s how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see.” He would resume pacing. “Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That’s the problem as I see it.” “Bunny, I don’t think ‘metahemeralism’ is even a word.” “Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That’s it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe.

Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism." "I'm sorry. I don't know what that is." "I don't either," Bunny would say brokenly. "Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see." He would resume pacing. "Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it." "Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word." "Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe." "Is it in the dictionary?" "Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean" — he made a picture frame with his hands — "the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?" And so it would go on, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. "This is a nice paper, Bun — ," Charles said cautiously. "Thanks, thanks." "But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?" "Oh, Donne," Bunny had said scoffingly. "I don't want to drag him into this." Henry had refused to read it. "I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really," he said, glancing over the first page. "Say, what's wrong with this type?" "Tripled spaced it," said Bunny proudly. "These lines are about an inch apart." "Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?" Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. "Looks kind of like a menu," he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence "And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.

Then the Yogi suddenly fell silent, and when I looked puzzled he shrugged and said: ‘Don’t you see yourself where the fault lies?’ But I could not see it. At this point he recapitulated with astonishing exactness everything he had learned from me by his questioning. He went back to the first signs of fatigue, repugnance, and intellectual constipation, and showed me that this could have happened only to someone who had submerged himself disproportionately in his studies and that it was high time for me to recover my self-control, and to regain my energy with outside help. Since I had taken the liberty of discontinuing my regular meditation exercises, he pointed out, I should at least have realized what was wrong as soon as the first evil consequences appeared, and should have resumed meditation. He was perfectly right. I had omitted meditating for quite a while on the grounds that I had no time, was too distracted or out of spirits, or too busy and excited with my studies. Moreover, as time went on I had completely lost all awareness of my continuous sin of omission. Even now, when I was desperate and had almost run aground, it had taken an outsider to remind me of it. As a matter of fact, I was to have the greatest difficulty snapping out of this state of neglect. I had to return to the training routines and beginners’ exercises in meditation in order gradually to relearn the art of composing myself and sinking into contemplation.” With a small sigh the Magister ceased pacing the room. “That is what happened to me, and to this day I am still a little ashamed to talk about it. But the fact is, Joseph, that the more we demand of ourselves, or the more our task at any given time demands of us, the more dependant we are on meditation as a wellspring of energy, as the ever-renewing concord of mind and soul. And – I could if I wished give you quite a few more examples of this – the more intensively a task requires our energies, arousing and exalting us at one time, tiring and depressing us at another, the more easily we may come to neglect this wellspring, just as when we are carried away by some intellectual work we easily forget to attend to the body. The really great men in the history of the world have all either known how to meditate or have unconsciously found their way to the place to which meditation leads us. Even the most vigorous and gifted among the others all failed and were defeated in the end because their task or their ambitious dream seized hold of them, made them into persons so possessed that they lost the capacity for liberating themselves from present things, and attaining perspective. Well, you know all this; it’s taught during the first exercises, of course. But it is inexorably true. How inexorably true it is, one realizes only after having gone astray.

Damn it, Jacob, I’m freezing my butt off.” “I came as fast as I could, considering I thought it would be wise to walk the last few yards.” Isabella whirled around, her smiling face lighting up the silvery night with more ease than the fullest of moons. She leapt up into his embrace, eagerly drinking in his body heat and affection. “I can see it now. ‘Daddy, tell me about your wedding day.’ ‘Well, son,’” she mocked, deepening her voice to his timbre and reflecting his accent uncannily, “’The first words out of your mother’s mouth were I’m freezing my butt off!’” “Very romantic, don’t you think?” he teased. “So, you think it will be a boy, then? Our first child?” “Well, I’m fifty percent sure.” “Wise odds. Come, little flower, I intend to marry you before the hour is up.” With that, he scooped her off her feet and carried her high against his chest. “Unfortunately, we are going to have to do this hike the hard way.” “As Legna tells it, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” “Yeah, well, I assure you a great many grooms have fudged that a little.” He reached to tuck her chilled face into the warm crook of his neck. “Surely the guests would know. It takes longer to walk than it does to fly . . . or whatever . . . out of the woods.” “This is true, little flower. But passing time in the solitude of the woods is not necessarily a difficult task for a man and woman about to be married.” “Jacob!” she gasped, laughing. “Some traditions are not necessarily publicized,” he teased. “You people are outrageous.” “Mmm, and if I had the ability to turn to dust right now, would you tell me no if I asked to . . . pass time with you?” Isabella shivered, but it was the warmth of his whisper and intent, not the cold, that made her do so. “Have I ever said no to you?” “No, but now would be a good time to start, or we will be late to our own wedding,” he chuckled. “How about no . . . for now?” she asked silkily, pressing her lips to the column on his neck beneath his long, loose hair. His fingers flexed on her flesh, his arms drawing her tighter to himself. He tried to concentrate on where he was putting his feet. “If that is going to be your response, Bella, then I suggest you stop teasing me with that wicked little mouth of yours before I trip and land us both in the dirt.” “Okay,” she agreed, her tongue touching his pulse. “Bella . . .” “Jacob, I want to spend the entire night making love to you,” she murmured. Jacob stopped in his tracks, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Okay, why is it I always thought it was the groom who was supposed to be having lewd thoughts about the wedding night while the bride took the ceremony more seriously?” “You started it,” she reminded him, laughing softly. “I am begging you, Isabella, to allow me to leave these woods with a little of my dignity intact.” He sighed deeply, turning his head to brush his face over her hair. “It does not take much effort from you to turn me inside out and rouse my hunger for you. If there is much more of your wanton taunting, you will be flushed warm and rosy by the time we reach that altar, and our guests will not have to be Mind Demons in order to figure out why.” “I’m sorry, you’re right.” She turned her face away from his neck. Jacob resumed his ritual walk for all of thirty seconds before he stopped again. “Bella . . .” he warned dangerously. “I’m sorry! It just popped into my head!” “What am I getting myself into?” he asked aloud, sighing dramatically as he resumed his pace. “Well, in about an hour, I hope it will be me.

Two years ago, he and Harold were at a restaurant and Harold was giving him a lecture about how his job at Rosen Pritchard had made him essentially an accessory to corporate malfeasance, when they both realized that their waiter was standing above them, holding his pad before him. "Pardon me," said the waiter. "Should I come back?" "No, don't worry," Harold said, picking up his menu. "I'm just yelling at my son, but I can do that after we order." The waiter had given him a commiserating smile, and he had smiled back, thrilled to have been claimed as another's in public, to finally be a member of the tribe of sons and daughters. Later, Harold had resumed his rant, and he had pretended to be upset, but really, he had been happy the entire night, contentment saturating his every cell, smiling so much that Harold had finally asked him if he was drunk.

Hayden’s soft steps resume beside me, muffled and hollow sounding. “Did your dad…Is he gone?” “Died a few years ago,” I confirm. “My parents were pretty old when they had us, so it wasn’t totally unexpected, but it still sucked. Sucks.” “I’m sorry,” he says. I force a slight smile in his direction. “Thanks.” “I always feel stupid saying that,” he murmurs. “I know,” I agree, “but there’s nothing else to say. And honestly, I would say seventy percent of my friends have pretty horrible relationships with their dads, so even if I didn’t get mine as long as I wish I could have, I still feel lucky.” “You’re not obligated to,” he says quietly. “You can feel cheated, Alice.” I feel a surprising prickle at the back of my nose and a tender ache in my heart. Not just because I’m thinking about my dad, but because what Cillian said wings through my mind again: An unpleasant sort. I could never blame Cillian for having that impression, but it bothers me to think of people out there meeting Hayden Anderson and coming away with this partial view of him. He can be unpleasant. He can also be kind, and even funny. He can be clueless that you are standing right next to him, but he also might notice you being harassed from the other side of the parking lot and intercede on your behalf. “I know I can,” I finally admit. “But I’d rather think of it like this. Like it only hurts this much because he was so great.” And so much reminds me of him that in a way it’s like he’s still here. Especially here, in the Georgian summer, interviewing a woman we’d both always been fascinated by. Hayden nods to himself, but neither of us says anything for a while. We just hike along the path in companionable silence, our arms grazing every several steps, our skin slightly sticky.

Oh, how weary I grow. How I writhed, and yawned, and nodded, and revived! How I pinched and pricked myself, and rubbed my eyes, and stood up, and sat down again, and nudged Joseph to inform me if he would ever have done. I was condemned to hear all out: finally, he reached the 'First of the Seventy-First.' At that crisis, a sudden inspiration descended on me; I was moved to rise and denounce Jabez Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon. 'Sir,' I exclaimed, 'sitting here within these four walls, at one stretch, I have endured and forgiven the four hundred and ninety heads of your discourse. Seventy times seven times have I plucked up my hat and been about to depart—Seventy times seven times have you preposterously forced me to resume my seat. The four hundred and ninety-first is too much. Fellow-martyrs, have at him! Drag him down, and crush him to atoms, that the place which knows him may know him no more!

The only way to keep up with all of this work was to do what SpaceX had promised from the beginning: operate in the spirit of a Silicon Valley start-up. Musk was always looking for brainy engineers who had not just done well at school but had done something exceptional with their talents. When he found someone good, Musk was relentless in courting him or her to come to SpaceX. Bryan Gardner, for example, first met Musk at a space rave in the hangars at the Mojave airport and a short while later started talking about a job. Gardner was having some of his academic work sponsored by Northrop Grumman. “Elon said, ‘We’ll buy them out,’” Gardner said. “So, I e-mailed him my resume at two thirty A.M., and he replied back in thirty minutes addressing everything I put in there point by point. He said, ‘When you interview make sure you can talk concretely about what you do rather than use buzzwords.’ It floored me that he would take the time to do this.

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

Lachlain shifted restlessly. He thought he was finally strong enough for them to leave tomorrow. He was physically ready to resume relations with his wife, and wasn’t eager to do it under this roof. He stood and offered his hand, and with a shy smile she slipped her hand in his. As they crossed in front of the screen, they barely dodged a volley of popcorn. He didn’t know where he was taking her, maybe out into the night fog. He just knew he wanted her, needed her, right then. She was too precious to him, too good to be true. When he was inside her, with his arms tight around her, he felt less like she’d slip away. But they only made it to an empty hall before he pressed her against the wall, cupped her neck, and demanded once again, “You’ll stay with me?” “Always.” Her hips arched up to him. “You love me?” “Always, Emmaline,” he grated against her lips. “Always. So damn much you make me mad with it.” When she moaned softly, he lifted her so she could wrap her legs around his waist. He knew he couldn’t have her here, but the reasons why grew hazy with her breaths in his ear. “I wish we were home,” she whispered. “Together in our bed.” Home. Damn if she hadn’t said home. In our bed. Had anything ever sounded so good? He pressed her harder into the wall, kissing her more deeply, with all the love he had in him, but suddenly they were falling, his balance somehow lost. He clenched her to him and twisted to take the impact on his back. When he opened his eyes, they were tumbling into their bed. Eyebrows raised, jaw slack, he released her and levered himself onto his elbows. “That was . . .” He exhaled a stunned breath. “That was a wild ride, lass. Will you no’ warn me next time?” She nodded solemnly, sitting up to straddle him, pulling her blouse over her head to bare her exquisite breasts for him. “Lachlain,” she leaned down to whisper in his ear, brushing her nipples over his chest, making him shudder and clench her hips. “I’m about to give you a very . . . wild . . . ride.” Yet after everything that had occurred, his need for her was too strong, and he gave himself up to it, tossing her to her back and ripping her clothes from her. He made short work of his own, then covered her. When he pinned her arms over her head and thrust into her, she cried his name and writhed beneath him so sweetly. “I’ll demand that ride tomorrow, love, but first you’re going to see wild from a man who knows.

say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid, but to bit off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge to help demselves." "Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on." "No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scougin' and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word; no use a-preaching to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get 'em full, dey wont hear you den; for den dey sink in the sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber." "Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to my supper." Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his shrill voice, and cried— "Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust—and den die." "Now, cook," said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; "stand just where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular attention.

In a physician's office in Kearny Street three men sat about a table, drinking punch and smoking. It was late in the evening, almost midnight, indeed, and there had been no lack of punch. The gravest of the three, Dr. Helberson, was the host—it was in his rooms they sat. He was about thirty years of age; the others were even younger; all were physicians. "The superstitious awe with which the living regard the dead," said Dr. Helberson, "is hereditary and incurable. One needs no more be ashamed of it than of the fact that he inherits, for example, an incapacity for mathematics, or a tendency to lie." The others laughed. "Oughtn't a man to be ashamed to lie?" asked the youngest of the three, who was in fact a medical student not yet graduated. "My dear Harper, I said nothing about that. The tendency to lie is one thing; lying is another." "But do you think," said the third man, "that this superstitious feeling, this fear of the dead, reasonless as we know it to be, is universal? I am myself not conscious of it." "Oh, but it is 'in your system' for all that," replied Helberson; "it needs only the right conditions—what Shakespeare calls the 'confederate season'—to manifest itself in some very disagreeable way that will open your eyes. Physicians and soldiers are of course more nearly free from it than others." "Physicians and soldiers!—why don't you add hangmen and headsmen? Let us have in all the assassin classes." "No, my dear Mancher; the juries will not let the public executioners acquire sufficient familiarity with death to be altogether unmoved by it." Young Harper, who had been helping himself to a fresh cigar at the sideboard, resumed his seat. "What would you consider conditions under which any man of woman born would become insupportably conscious of his share of our common weakness in this regard?" he asked, rather verbosely. "Well, I should say that if a man were locked up all night with a corpse—alone—in a dark room—of a vacant house—with no bed covers to pull over his head—and lived through it without going altogether mad, he might justly boast himself not of woman born, nor yet, like Macduff, a product of Cæsarean section." "I thought you never would finish piling up conditions," said Harper, "but I know a man who is neither a physician nor a soldier who will accept them all, for any stake you like to name." "Who is he?" "His name is Jarette—a stranger here; comes from my town in New York. I have no money to back him, but he will back himself with loads of it." "How do you know that?" "He would rather bet than eat. As for fear—I dare say he thinks it some cutaneous disorder, or possibly a particular kind of religious heresy." "What does he look like?" Helberson was evidently becoming interested. "Like Mancher, here—might be his twin brother." "I accept the challenge," said Helberson, promptly. "Awfully obliged to you for the compliment, I'm sure," drawled Mancher, who was growing sleepy. "Can't I get into this?" "Not against me," Helberson said. "I don't want your money." "All right," said Mancher; "I'll be the corpse." The others laughed. The outcome of this crazy conversation we have seen.

I wanted to tell you.” Maggie was smiling now, and when he pulled back enough to appreciate that fact, she started toying with the hair at his nape. “Tell me what?” Her fingers went still. “You never miss a detail, Benjamin. Surely you knew when I nearly fainted at Lady Dandridge’s…?” He rose and dusted off his knees, then resumed his place beside her—right smack beside her. “You’d been wandering in the rain for God knows how long, missing sleep, and likely doing without proper sustenance. If every woman who laced her stays too tightly were carrying, the population would shortly double.” “Benjamin, we are going to have a baby. I should have told you this sooner, but I did not want you to feel trapped.” She was back to smoothing her skirts and gripping his hand, suggesting she hadn’t composed herself quite as quickly as appearances might indicate. “Maggie, do you feel trapped?” It was a sincere question, the sort of sincere question that kept a sincere man up late of a night and might cause him more than one pang in years to come. “By the child? Of course not.” Or it might not. “You want this child?” “Gracious God, Benjamin. I spent years dealing with Cecily because Bridget was mine to love. I’ve protected my ducal family because they were mine to love. This child is mine to love, and you are mine to love. How could you think I’d feel otherwise?” “We are going to have to watch this tendency of yours to protect all whom you love.” She smiled a little sheepishly. “I want a big family, but we’re getting a rather late start on things.” “Then we’ll just have to be diligent about it.” His

Clingmans Dome in the middle of the park. Then, it’s downhill to Virginia, and people have told me Virginia is a cakewalk. I’ll learn soon enough that “easy” trail beyond the Smoky Mountains is as much a fantasy as my dream lunch with pizza…uh, I mean Juli, but for now I’ve convinced myself all will be well once I get through the Smokies. I leave Tray Mountain Shelter at 1:00 with ten miles to go. I’ve eaten the remainder of my food. I’ve been hiking roughly two miles per hour. Downhill is slower due to my sore knee. I need to get to Hiawassee by 6:00 p.m., the check-in deadline at Blueberry Patch Hostel, where my mail drop is waiting.5 I have little margin, so I decide to push for a while. I down a couple of Advil and “open it up” for the first time this trip. In the next hour I cover 3.5 miles. Another 1.5 miles and I am out of water, since I skipped all the side trails leading to streams. Five miles to go, and I’m running out of steam. Half the strands of muscle in my legs have taken the rest of the day off, leaving the other half to do all the work. My throat is dry. Less than a mile to go, a widening stream parallels the trail. It is nearing 6:00, but I can handle the thirst no longer. There is a five-foot drop down an embankment to the stream. Hurriedly I drop my pack and camera case, which I have clipped over the belt of my pack. The camera starts rolling down the embankment, headed for the stream. I lunge for it and miss. It stops on its own in the nook of a tree root. I have to be more careful. I’m already paranoid about losing or breaking gear. Every time I resume hiking after a rest, I stop a few steps down the trail and look back for anything I may have left behind. There’s nothing in my pack that I don’t need. Finally, I’m

I want to test him, said Saphira. She slapped her tail against the ground, causing Fírnen to pause. Test him? How? For what? To find out if he has the iron in his bones and the fire in his belly to match me. Are you sure? he asked, understanding her intent. She again slapped her tail against the ground, and he felt her certainty and the strength of her desire. I know everything about him--everything but this. Besides--she displayed a flash of amusement--it’s not as if dragons mate for life. Very well…But be careful. He had barely finished speaking when Saphira lunged forward and bit Fírnen on his left flank, drawing blood and causing Fírnen to snarl and spring backward. The green dragon growled, appearing uncertain of himself, and retreated before Saphira as she prowled toward him. Saphira! Chagrined, Eragon turned to Arya, intending to apologize. Arya did not seem upset. To Fírnen, and to Eragon as well, she said, If you want her to respect you, then you have to bite her in return. She raised an eyebrow at Eragon, and he responded with a wry smile, understanding. Fírnen glanced at Arya and hesitated. He jumped back as Saphira snapped at him again. Then he roared and lifted his wings, as if to make himself appear larger, and he charged Saphira--and nipped her on a hind leg, sinking his teeth into her hide. The pain Saphira felt was not pain. Saphira and Fírnen resumed circling, growling and yowling with increasing volume. Then Fírnen jumped at her again. He landed on Saphira’s neck and bore her head to the ground, where he held her pinned and gave her a pair of playful bites at the base of her skull. Saphira did not struggle as fiercely as Eragon would have expected, and he guessed that she had allowed Fírnen to catch her, as it was not something even Thorn had managed to do. “The courting of dragons is no gentle affair,” he said to Arya. “Did you expect soft words and tender caresses?” “I suppose not.” With a heave of her neck, Saphira threw Fírnen off and scrambled backward. She roared and clawed at the ground with her forefeet, and then Fírnen lifted his head toward the sky and loosed a rippling pennant of green fire twice the length of his own body. “Oh!” exclaimed Arya, sounding delighted. “What?” “That’s the first time he has breathed fire!

He had been right. Kestrel felt better the moment she opened her eyes. Her knee was sore and wrapped in a bandage, but the fevered swelling was gone, and a great deal of pain with it. Her father was standing, his back to her as he looked out the dark window. “You’d better release me from our bargain,” she said. “The military won’t take me now, not with a bad knee.” He turned and echoed her faint smile. “Don’t you wish that were so,” he said. “Painful though it is, this isn’t a serious wound. You’ll be on your feet soon, and walking normally before a month’s out. There’s no permanent damage. If you doubt me and think I’m blinded by my hope to see you become an officer, the doctor will tell you the same thing. She’s in the sitting room.” Kestrel looked at the closed door of her bedroom and wondered why the doctor wasn’t in the room with them now. “I want to ask you something,” her father said. “I’d prefer she didn’t hear.” Suddenly it seemed as if Kestrel’s heart, not her knee, was sore. That it had been cut into, and bled. “What kind of deal did you make with Irex?” her father asked. “What?” He gave her a level look. “The duel was going badly for you. Then Irex held back, and you two seemed to have quite an interesting conversation. When the fighting resumed, it was as if Irex was a different person. He shouldn’t have lost to you--not like that, anyway--unless you said something to make him.” She didn’t know how to respond. When her father had asked his question she was so horribly grateful he wasn’t probing into her reasons for the duel that she missed some of his words. “Kestrel, I just want to make sure that you haven’t given Irex some kind of power over you.” “No.” She sighed, disappointed that her father had seen through her victory. “If anything, he’s in my power.” “Ah. Good. Will you tell me how?” “I know a secret.” “Very good. No, don’t tell me what it is. I don’t want to know.” Kestrel looked at the fire. She let the flames hypnotize her eyes. “Do you think I care how you won?” her father said softly. “You won. Your methods don’t matter.” Kestrel thought about the Herran War. She thought about the suffering her father had brought to this country, and how his actions had led to her becoming a mistress, and Arin a slave. “Do you really believe that?” “Yes,” he said. “I do.

All of a sudden (in 1938 I think), in order to extend its autarchy to the domain of cinema, Italy decreed an embargo on American films. It wasn’t a question of censorship: as usual the censors granted or denied permission to individual films, and nobody saw the ones that didn’t get it and that was it. In spite of the awkward anti-Hollywood propaganda campaign that accompanied the measure (right around that time the regime began to conform to Hitler’s racism), the true reason for the embargo was supposed to be commercial protectionism, in order to make room in the market for Italian (and German) productions. For this reason the four largest American production and distribution companies—Metro, Fox, Paramount, Warner—(I’m still relying on memory, trusting the accuracy of the registration of my trauma), whereas films by other American companies like RKO, Columbia, Universal, United Artists (which had also been distributed before then by Italian companies) continued to arrive until 1941, that is until Italy found itself at war with the United States. I was still granted some sporadic satisfaction (in fact, one of the greatest: Stagecoach [John Ford, 1939]) but my collector’s voracity suffered a fatal blow. Compared to all of the prohibitions and obligations that fascism had imposed on us, and to the even more severe ones that it continued to enforce in those years before and then during the war, the veto on American films was certainly a minor or small loss, and I wasn’t foolish enough not to know it. Yet it was the first to affect me directly, and I hadn’t known any years other than those of fascism nor had I felt any needs other than those that the environment in which I lived could suggest and satisfy. It was the first time a right I enjoyed had been taken from me: more than a right, a dimension, a world, a space in my mind; and I felt this loss as cruel oppression which embodied all the forms of oppression that I’d heard about or seen other people suffer. If I can still talk about it today like a lost privilege it’s because something disappeared like that from my life, never to return again. So many things had changed after the war was over: I’d changed, cinema had become something else, something different in itself and in relation to me. My biography as a spectator resumed, but it was that of another spectator who wasn’t just a spectator anymore.

The most poignant lesson, which proved to be the last, was held a few days before the wedding. Diana’s thoughts were on the profound changes ahead. Miss Snipp noted: “Lady Diana rather tired--too many late nights. I delivered silver salt-cellars--present from West Heath school--very beautiful and much admired. Lady Diana counting how many days of freedom are left to her. Rather sad. Masses of people outside of Palace. We hope to resume lessons in October. Lady Diana said: “In 12 days time I shall no longer be me.’” Even as she spoke those words Diana must have known that she had left behind her bachelor persona as soon as she had entered the Palace portals. In the weeks following the engagement she had grown in confidence and self-assurance, her sense of humour frequently bubbling to the surface. Lucinda Craig Harvey saw her former cleaning lady on several occasions during her engagement, once at the 30th birthday party of her brother-in-law, Neil McCorquodale. “She had a distance to her and everyone was in awe of her,” she recalls. It was a quality also noticed by James Gilbey. “She has always been seen as a typical Sloane Ranger. That’s not true. She was always removed, always had a determination about her and was very matter-of-fact, almost dogmatic. That quality has now developed into a tremendous presence.” While she was in awe of Prince Charles, deferring to his every decision, she didn’t appear to be overcome by her surroundings. Inwardly she may have been nervous, outwardly she appeared calm, relaxed and ready to have fun. At Prince Andrew’s 21st birthday party which was held at Windsor Castle she was at her ease among friends. When her future brother-in-law asked where he could find the Duchess of Westminster, the wife of Britain’s richest aristocrat, she joked: “Oh Andrew, do stop name dropping.” Her ready repartee, cutting but not vicious, was reminiscent of her eldest sister Sarah when she was the queen bee of the Society circuit. “Don’t look so serious it’s not working,” joked Diana as she introduced Adam Russell to the Queen, Prince Charles and other members of the royal family in the receiving line at the ball held at Buckingham Palace two days before her wedding. Once again she seemed good humoured and relaxed in her grand surroundings. There wasn’t the slightest sign that a few hours earlier she had collapsed in paroxysms of tears and seriously considered calling the whole thing off.

A few hours later, Jane came out of her boudoir to find her husband in his dressing gown, stretched out across the bed reading the newspaper and idly petting their spaniel Little Archer, a pup from Mrs. Patch’s brood. Seizing the moment, Little Archer leapt off the bed and into her dressing room, where he could chew up slippers to his heart’s content. Dom, however, didn’t even look up as she entered. “They’re calling this the most elegant coronation in history.” He snorted. “I noticed there’s no mention of its being the most interminable.” “Dom,” she purred as she closed the dog into the dressing room for the moment. “All that pomp and circumstance is so tedious.” Still reading, he turned the page of the newspaper. “Ravenswood told me that King William is determined to make sure that parliamentary reform is enacted.” She walked languidly forward. “Dom.” He snapped the paper to straighten it. “It’s about bloody time. I should think--” “Dom!” she practically shouted. “Hmm?” He glanced up, then frowned. “Why are you wearing your coronation robe?” “I was cold,” she said with a teasing smile. She let the robe fall open. “Since I have nothing on underneath.” Dom stared, then gulped. Unsurprisingly, his staff jerked instantly to attention. “If you’re trying to torture me,” he said hoarsely, “you’re doing a good job of it.” She sashayed toward the bed, letting the velvet and ermine robe swing about her. “No torture intended.” She put one knee on the bed. “Dr. Worth said I may resume relations with my husband whenever I am ready.” He blinked, then rose to his knees and seized her about the waist. “May I assume that you’re ready?” he rasped as he brushed a kiss to her cheek. “You have no idea.” She met his mouth with hers. They kissed a long moment, a hot, heavenly kiss that reminded her of how very talented her husband was at this aspect of marriage. She untied his dressing gown and shoved it off his shoulders. He had just finished tearing off his drawers when she shoved him down onto the bed. His eyes lit up as she hovered over him. “Ah, so it’s to be like that, my wicked little seductress?” “Oh, yes.” She grinned at him. “I do so enjoy having a viscount fall before me.” She started to remove her robe, but he stayed her with his hand. “Don’t.” He raked her with a heated glance. “Next session of parliament, I’ll endure the boredom of the endless speeches by imagining you seducing me in all your pomp and circumstance.” “My pomp is nothing to yours, my love,” she murmured as she caught his rampant flesh in her hand. “Yours is quite…er…pompous.” “That’s what happens if the viscount falls.” He thrust against her hand. “His pomp always rises.” And as she laughed, they created a pomp and circumstance all their own.

Allan found his place for the second time, and fell headlong into the bottomless abyss of the English Law. “Page 280,” he began. “Law of husband and wife. Here’s a bit I don’t understand, to begin with: ‘It may be observed generally that the law considers marriage in the light of a Contract.’ What does that mean? I thought a contract was the sort of a thing a builder signs when he promises to have the workmen out of the house in a given time, and when the time comes (as my poor mother used to say) the workmen never go.” “Is there nothing about Love?” asked Neelie. “Look a little lower down.” “Not a word. He sticks to his confounded ‘Contract’ all the way through.” “Then he’s a brute! Go on to something else that’s more in our way.” “Here’s a bit that’s more in our way: ‘Incapacities. If any persons under legal incapacities come together, it is a meretricious, and not a matrimonial union.’ (Blackstone’s a good one at long words, isn’t he? I wonder what he means by meretricious?) ‘The first of these legal disabilities is a prior marriage, and having another husband or wife living — ’“ “Stop!” said Neelie; “I must make a note of that.” She gravely made her first entry on the page headed “Good,” as follows: “I have no husband, and Allan has no wife. We are both entirely unmarried at the present time.” “All right, so far,” remarked Allan, looking over her shoulder. “Go on,” said Neelie. “What next?” “‘The next disability,’“ proceeded Allan, “‘is want of age. The age for consent to matrimony is, fourteen in males, and twelve in females.’ Come!” cried Allan, cheerfully, “Blackstone begins early enough, at any rate!” Neelie was too business-like to make any other remark, on her side, than the necessary remark in the pocketbook. She made another entry under the head of “Good”: “I am old enough to consent, and so is Allan too. Go on,” resumed Neelie, looking over the reader’s shoulder. “Never mind all that prosing of Blackstone’s, about the husband being of years of discretion, and the wife under twelve. Abominable wretch! the wife under twelve! Skip to the third incapacity, if there is one.” “‘The third incapacity,’“ Allan went on, “‘is want of reason.’“ Neelie immediately made a third entry on the side of “Good”: “Allan and I are both perfectly reasonable. Skip to the next page.” Allan skipped. “‘A fourth incapacity is in respect of proximity of relationship.’“ A fourth entry followed instantly on the cheering side of the pocketbook: “He loves me, and I love him — without our being in the slightest degree related to each other. Any more?” asked Neelie, tapping her chin impatiently with the end of the pencil. “Plenty more,” rejoined Allan; “all in hieroglyphics. Look here: ‘Marriage Acts, 4 Geo. IV., c. 76, and 6 and 7 Will. IV., c. 85 (q).’ Blackstone’s intellect seems to be wandering here. Shall we take another skip, and see if he picks himself up again on the next page?

In fact, I am generally proud of having had so many adventures. But today, I had barely pronounced the words than I was seized with contrition; it seems as though I am lying, that I have never had the slightest adventure in my life, or rather, that I don't even know what the word means any more. [...] Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But no adventures. It isn't a question of words; I am beginning to understand. [...] There is nothing brilliant about my life now: but from time to time, for example, for example, when they play music in the cafes, I look back and tell myself: in old days, in London, Meknes, Tokyo, I have known great moments, I have had adventures. Now I am deprived of this. I have suddenly learned, without apparent reason, that I have been lying to myself for ten years. [...] ... adventure does not let itself be drawn out; it only makese sense when dead. [...] Each instant appears only as a part of a sequence. I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplacable-and yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated. [...] I shall never rediscover either this woman or this night. I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn on early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass. All of a sudden something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its daily routine. I turn; behind me, this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It grows smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning. Following this gold spot with my eyes I think I would accept-even if I had to risk death, lost a fortune, a friend-to live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from end to end. But an adventure never returns nor is prolonged." (p.56-57) "... Perhaps there is nothing in the world I cling to as much as this feeling of adventure; but it comes when it pleases; it is gone so quickly and how empty I am once it has left. Does it, ironically, pay me these short visits in order to show me that I have wasted my life? [...] This feeling of adventure definitely does not come from events: I have proved it. It's rather they way in which the moments are linked together. I think this is what happens: you suddenly feel that time is passing, that each instant leads to another, this one to another one, and so on; that each instant is annihilated, and that it isn't worth while to hold it back, etc., etc. And then you attribute this property to events which appear to you *in* the instants; what belongs to the form you carry over to the content. You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. You see a woman, you think that one day she'll be old, only you don't see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you *see* her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure. If I remember correctly, they call that the irreversibility of time. The feeling of advanture would simply be that of the irreversibility of time. But why don't we always have it? Is it that time is not always irreversible? There are moments when you have the impression that you can do what you want, go forward or backward, that it has no importance; and then other times when you might say that the links have been tightened and, in that case, it's not a questino of missing your turn because you could never start again.

He may of course resume it at any time. Such is the curse of enslavement to drugs. It would be interesting to know,” he added, with seeming irrelevancy, “how he became involved with cocaine.’ “I have always known him to keep it about his rooms,” I answered truthfully. “He says he takes it because of boredom, lack of activity.” Freud turned and smiled at me, his features displaying the infinite and nameless wisdom and compassion I had noticed the moment I first set eyes on him. “That is not the reason a man pursues such a path to destruction,” he said softly.

Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism." "I'm sorry. I don't know what that is." "I don't either," Bunny would say brokenly. "Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see." He would resume pacing. "Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it." "Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word." "Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe." "Is it in the dictionary?" "Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean" — he made a picture frame with his hands — "the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?" And so it would go on, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. "This is a nice paper, Bun — ," Charles said cautiously. "Thanks, thanks." "But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?" "Oh, Donne," Bunny had said scoffingly. "I don't want to drag him into this." Henry had refused to read it. "I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really," he said, glancing over the first page. "Say, what's wrong with this type?" "Tripled spaced it," said Bunny proudly. "These lines are about an inch apart." "Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?" Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. "Looks kind of like a menu," he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence "And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.

Infinity of your thoughts Time does not seem to pass, As moments appear to be frozen in an unknown thought, I try hard to bypass, This eerie feeling and the war always lost yet often fought, And I wonder what is this feeling, This enigmatic state of endless time, With which I have now been for very long dealing, A state where time no longer remembers it is time, Then in this moment, Where infinity is cast in a battle with finity, Time remains suspended in an uncertain moment, Where every virtue exists except for certainty, As the war rages and both lose, Infinity retreats to its zone while finity retains its domain, And time that had been held trapped in this noose, Now attains its lost state and claims its lost domain, That spreads across infinity in the subsets of finity, Then my darling Irma, I love you infinitely, Because now there is certainty, And I want you to know, you are my only joy, my moment in time, my eternity, As time resumes its pace, I think of you in the lanes of my mind, And within it I discover our space, Where time still lies trapped, and it does not mind, This existence in a moment where infinity lies everywhere, The infinity of your feelings, your memories and your beauty, And there I lie thinking of you always somewhere, To feed the appetite of our love and its eternity, So if you ever talk to me my love, Maybe I am thinking in this corner feeding the infinity, Of your beauty and our love, To steal from time, from fate, from the Universe, our destiny, Where you lie within me, And we lie in this space of infinity, You loving me and I loving thee, Discovering the charms of your beauty, That is where my love I shall be, If you ever talk to me and you still need to find me, Walk into my mind, but tread softly for you shall be treading over infinity, Where I have spread my feelings just for thee, only thee, And as you behold me, Do not hesitate to wake me up, There in the corner of my mind where I shall always be, Kiss me and wake me up, Then let me cast you into the infinity of my mind and its thoughts, And reveal your own beauty to you, And as you wake up in the infinity of my thoughts, Allow me to cast the veil of infinity bearing your beauty and you, Then let time stop forever, Because now there shall be no need of new thoughts or new feelings, And we shall now exist forever, and forever, In infinities impenetrable ceilings, Where everything is just you and me, Nothing else, and where nothing exists, You and I lying in an eternally amorous state and what a wonder it shall be, Because now there is no identity, I am you and you are me, And both of us surrounded by eternity, In the universe where we have created our own space beyond every scalable limit, And we have become the masters of our own destiny, With nothing to include and nothing to omit, Because there is only one need, Your love for me and my love for you, And there is nothing to worry about or heed, Just your beauty and you, only you, in an endless existence where it is only you, Everywhere, here and there and even that space that time refers to as somewhere, There we lie wound on every loop of infinity, To spread with it everywhere, And believe in the beauty of our singular destiny!

The orders which you are about to receive have come from me,” she said, standing above them on the iron stairs, speaking with resonant clarity. “The men who’ll issue them are acting under my instructions. The interlocking control system has broken down. It will now be replaced by human labor. Train service will be resumed at once.” She noticed some faces in the crowd staring at her with a peculiar look: with a veiled resentment and the kind of insolent curiosity that made her suddenly conscious of being a woman. Then she remembered what she wore, and thought that it did look preposterous—and then, at the sudden stab of some violent impulse that felt like defiance and like loyalty to the full, real meaning of the moment, she threw her cape back and stood in the raw glare of light, under the sooted columns, like a figure at a formal reception, sternly erect, flaunting the luxury of naked arms, of glowing black satin, of a diamond flashing like a military cross.

Just a minute.” I lowered the receiver. “Curran?” “What?” “Did you get a call from PAD about me?” “I may have.” “What did you tell them?” “I don’t recall. I think I mentioned your discipline and ability to follow orders. I may have said something about you being a team player.” Derek emitted a strangled cough. “Why?” I demanded. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Curran resumed hammering. “I’m sorry,” I said into the phone, sticking my finger into my other ear so I could hear. “His Majesty tends to exaggerate things. I’m not a team player. I’m undisciplined and I have a problem with authority. Also, the Beast Lord can’t hammer for shit.” On the roof Derek was laughing his head off.

They say land of the free and the home of the brave,” he mutters, shaking his head as he resumes our walk. “Yeah, they do,” I follow behind him. “Your point?” He turns back to me. “I say, it’s the land of the mentally inept, electronically dependent, and brainwashed media slaves.” “You just insulted me. Gravely, I think.” “Sorry, I’m just saying why waste now time worrying about later?” “Now time?” “It’s the only measure of time that matters. Time itself is just an invisible line, a measure people made up, right? You know that. And while it’s good for reference, it’s also a major stress trigger, because you’re letting it control you.

Here Aunt Jane paused, and began to cut three-cornered pieces out of a time-stained square of flowered chintz. The quilt was to be of the wild-goose pattern. There was a drowsy hum from the bee hive near the window, and the shadows were lengthening as sunset approached. "One queer thing about it," she resumed, "was that while Sally Ann was talkin', not one of us felt like laughin'. We set there as solemn as if parson was preachin' to us on 'lection and predestination. But whenever I think about it now, I laugh fit to kill. And I've thought many a time that Sally Ann's plain talk to them men done more good than all the sermons us women had had preached to us about bein' 'shame faced' and 'submittin" ourselves to our husbands, for every one o' them women come out in new clothes that spring, and such a change as it made in some of 'em!. . . . "Things is different from what they used to be," she went on, as she folded her pieces into a compact bundle and tied it with a piece of gray yarn. "My son-in-law was tellin' me last summer how a passel o' women kept goin' up to Frankfort and so pesterin' the Legislatur', that they had to change the laws to git rid of 'em. So married women now has all the prop erty rights they want, and more'n some of 'cm has sense to use, I reckon.

When I finally get called, I give my name as Bryan Jackson—Bryan after the Purple People Eater who is married to our old water polo coach, and Jackson after Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Tamara Dunleavy lives. I’m trying to give my story to a desk sergeant who is about as interested as a hibernating bear. The only time his ears perk up is when I drop the name Gus Alabaster. “You mean the gangster?” “He’s my father,” I resume the telling, “even though we’ve never met. He doesn’t even know I exist. Mom only told me I was his son when she read that he hasn’t got long to live.” The desk sergeant stops making notes and looks up at me. “What exactly is the nature of your complaint?” “I’m not complaining about anything. I just need Gus Alabaster’s address so I can go over there and meet him before he dies.” “So no actual crime has been committed,” he concludes. I shake my head. “No crime. I just need the address.” “We don’t do that here. Sorry, kid. Next!” Diaper Man gets up and heads for the desk. What can I do? I turn to walk away, utterly defeated. But before I can take a step, Laska rushes over and pushes me back into the chair. “Aren’t you going to help him?” she shrills at the desk sergeant, her face flaming bright red. “Don’t you even care?” The cop leans back in his chair. “And you are?” “All he wants to do is have a moment with his dying father!” Tears—real tears—are streaming down her cheeks. “And there’s a time limit for that, you know!” The desk sergeant’s half-closed eyes pop wide open. He’s probably seen it all working this job, but a crying girl turns out to be the one thing he doesn’t know what to do with. And I’ve got to hand it to Laska. As soon as she sees she’s spooking the guy, she switches on the full waterworks. He hustles to his feet. “Uh—follow me.

Ah, stories," he drawled as he resumed his seat. "I do love a good story." He leaned towards her, and she resisted the urge to scoot further away. He clinked their glasses together and then leaned back. She took a small sip. "And tell me, my sweet wife, what do the other Gods whisper about me when they are high on the mountains of Olympus?

You and my destiny! When was the last time I tried something for the first time? I thought about it for sometime, Then something reminded me of you, And I recalled the days spent together with you, The mornings were smooth, the days passed by without the unnecessary care, Everything seemed beautiful and fair, just because you were with me everywhere, And we did things silly and wise as well, and there were many acts we tried for the first time, I remember that, for example climbing a mountain and staring at the forest in silence as we lost every sense of time, It surely was first time, when I felt time was such an unwanted invention of the Universe, Because it loses its every existential value when two hearts learn how to converse, It was first time that I felt this when I was with you, Hearts in conversation, when everything was silent, even I, and even you, Yes, it was first time when I attempted many things for the first time, The sky looked clearer and truly blue, you stared into my eyes for hours and ah the beauty of the stillness of time, It was something I experienced first time then, but since you have left, it never happened again, Now the time is permanently still, and for me it is like the tired pendulum of the clock oscillating to and fro again and again, But nothing else except the pendulum moves, nothing else except the transition of days into nights takes place, Because everything is the same, the same days, the same nights, the same pendulum and the same place, Where nothing new happens and nothing at all for the first time happens either, Like a flower that is frozen in time, experiences no change in seasons and it hangs there in pain, longing to wither, So that new could seize its opportunity and seasons could render everything fresh, Alas it is a wish that exists forever as an imagination because time is strangely still and there is nothing alive and fresh, And when people ask me when was the last time you did something for the first time, I simply look at them, smile at their curiosity, and I tell them, well it was when I was with her, because that was a beautiful time, Where time hung as moments over everything, even our wishes and desires, And the world seemed a huge projection of our wishes and our beautiful desires. Maybe you would not understand because for you the moving pendulum represents time, But to me the spontaneous germination of feelings, the rhythmic movement of two conversing hearts is the actual signature of time, So you keep gazing at the oscillating pendulum of the clock on the wall, While I dwell with her, our memories, in the time’s eternal hall, Where it weaves moments of infinity around both of us as our hearts resume their conversation, Because two lovers are interested in destiny and not the destination!

Okay,” she said after a few miles. “But it was easier to be mad at you instead of scared for my brother. Could you do something to make me mad, please?” “I need inspiration,” he apologized. “Maybe if you could say something stupid or offer to risk your life for people I don’t care about?” She laughed, as he meant her to. It didn’t last long, but she didn’t resume chewing on her lip.

That one will bring you here.” He paused, cleared his throat. “If— if you ever wanted to return. It’ll only work within a few miles, but…” His voice trailed off and did not resume. Gods. At once, I understood. This was not about the necklace, beautiful and finely crafted as it was. He wasn’t giving me another pretty trinket. No, Max — Max, the man who had taken such great care to carve out his own solitary corner of the world — was giving me what I’d never had. The real gift was not the necklace. The gift was a home to come back to.

While I was in Poland,’ she said, ‘I vowed to develop a less sentimental view of life, and if there is something I regret in my novel, it is that the material circumstances of the characters are so comfortable. It would be a more serious book, I believe, if that were not the case. Spending time with Olga,’ she said, ‘certain things came to light for me, as objects under water come to light when the water drains away. I realised that our whole sense of life as a romance – even our conception of love itself – was a vision in which material things played far too great a role, and that without those things we might find that certain feelings diminished while others became accentuated. I was very attracted to the hardness of Olga,’ she said, ‘to the hardness of her life. When she spoke about her relationship with her husband it was as though she were speaking about the parts of an engine, explaining how they worked or did not work. There was no romance in it, no place that was covered up and that you weren’t allowed to see. ... I started to feel more sympathetic towards the husband, being treated like a car engine; and then she told me that for a period of time he had left, had left the family, unable to bear this lack of sentimentality any longer, and had gone and lived in a flat on his own. When he returned, they resumed their life as before. Was she not angry with him, I said, for deserting her and leaving her to take care of the children alone? No, on the contrary, she was pleased to see him. We are completely honest with one another, she said, and so I knew when he came back that it was because he had accepted the way things were. I tried to imagine,’ Angeliki said, ‘what this marriage was like, in which nobody had to make promises or apologise, in which you didn’t have to buy flowers for the other person or cook them a special meal or light the candles to make a flattering atmosphere, or book a holiday to help you get over your problems; or rather, in which you were made to do without those things and live together so honestly and nakedly.

I, too, was taken aback by this turn of events. I was speechless. My mind raced to find a possible answer. Finally, I muttered apathetically, “If I’m to be a kept boy, I’ll expect to be housed in a luxury penthouse, not in a run-of-the mill flat. “Secondly, I’ll want a top-of-the-line sports car –a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, not a city car. “Last but not least, I’ll insist on a healthy remuneration to keep me in a princely style.”               Andy stared at me as if I was a whoreson, while Uncle James broke out in comedic exuberance. Shocked by my uncle’s boisterous outburst, my lover gaped, not knowing what to make of my guardian. “You can take the boy out of China, but you can’t take China out of the boy,” the Englishman vociferated hilariously.               My chaperone scrutinized my uncle, wondering if the man had lost his mind. He waited for James’ laughter to subside. “What are you talking about?” he expressed.               I twittered, “In the event that you’ve lost your mind, sir, I’m not from China. I’m from Malaya.”               James iterated enthusiastically, “Nevertheless, you, young man, are Chinese. Having dealt with Chinese businessmen for most of my life, you are a true-to-form Chinese.” He resumed, “Like the Hong Kong Chinese I’ve dealt with over the years you are an excellent negotiator. You’ve inherited your parents’ genetic ability to strike an optimum bargain to your advantage.” He paused. “In all seriousness, I think your counter-suggestions may be just the ammunition you’ll need to fend off Mossey. That is, if you desire to forgo his offer,” he opined.               Quick-witted Andy responded cheerfully, “What an awesome idea. I’ll be more than happy to draft the counter-proposal for you, my lovely one.” For the most part, I’d been a silent observer of this imprudent frivolity. I answered calmly, after giving the matter some thought, “I’ll sleep on this and have answers for you before our return to Daltonbury Hall.

Andy remained seated. I chirped, “Sir, please tell me the reason for your visit. My guardian is fully aware of your proposal.” Struck by my candidness, Ozwalt stammered, “Very well, I will tell you the reason I’m here,” he raised his voice in displeasure. “Your counterproposal is deplorable!” My lover remarked aggressively, “What’s deplorable about Young wishing to be kept in the style he is accustomed to?” The Englishman exclaimed, “He’s not even of age to drive, and he wants a Lamborghini or a Ferrari? What is he thinking?!” “You offered him a city car,” my Valet countered. “He has every right to ask for what he desires.” The man repudiated defensively, “I offered him a city car upon his coming of age to drive, not before!” He was seething with anger. “Atop this, he demands a luxury penthouse in Mayfair or Park Lane, not to mention the live-in personal tutor! Is he insane? Most adults wouldn’t be able to afford a luxury flat and experienced educator, let alone an adolescent who is barely out of his teens.” “Sir, if you do not have the financial capabilities to accommodate the boy’s expectations, there are others who are perfectly capable of doing so,” my chaperone asserted. “Andy! Are you telling me that the lad has other well-endowed suitors willing to pay for such frivolousness?” My lover and I sniggered at the Englishman’s comment, but we managed to suppress our mirth. My guardian answered solemnly, “That, Sir, is none of your concern. I presume you’re here to discuss Young’s counterproposal, not the proposals of his other suitors.” He was taken aback by my mentor’s forthrightness. He raised his voice in retaliation. “I’m here to talk to Young. I would like Young to speak for himself.” I spoke unrelentingly, “I have asked Andy to negotiate on my behalf. I have heard everything he has said and challenge none of it. If my terms are not met, I’m afraid our arrangement is over. There is no further need for discussion.” By now, Ozwalt was on fire. He waved his fist at me and shouted, “You rapacious whore! You’re nothing but a self-indulgent sybaritic slut from a third-world country!” Before he could continue lambasting me with further insults, Wilhem entered. “What’s going on here?” my big-brother questioned. Mossey resumed berating my integrity, calling me a barrage of repugnant names while my chaperones carted him off the campus grounds to his waiting chauffeur and Bentley. Groups of students stood gaping at the wild man, speculating about the nature of the ruckus they were witnessing.

I twittered, “Did anything develop from the liaisons?”               “No. We never exchanged words about it. It was purely to get our rocks off. But…” he went silent.               “But? Carry on,” I encouraged.               “It was difficult. I cried and missed him terribly after he returned to the States.”               “Did he write to you?”               He said remorsefully, “He wrote me a generic letter but mentioned nothing about our encounters.”               “Do you still miss him?” I asked.               The boy sobbed quietly before replying. “I haven’t told anyone about this until now.”               Putting my arm around him, I enquired, “Would you like to have a fling with Jules?”               “I can’t. It’s not allowed.” My tent-mate turned away uneasily.               “Not allowed by whom?” I questioned.               “By the authorities.”               “The only authority that’s stopping you is you. Are all Singaporeans afraid of authority?”               He hadn’t expected me to ask such an unorthodox question. “You don’t know who is listening or watching your every move,” he shushed.               “Where I come from, we speak our minds.”               “You are one of the lucky ones to go to school in England. I wish I could go to an American school.” He paused before resuming, “My parents are very strict. That’s why I’m here at OBSS.”               I injected, “You don’t want to be here?”               He shook his head timidly. “Neither do I. Let’s do something roguish and get expelled together,” I joked. The lad exclaimed, thinking my deliberation serious. “Good god, No! My parents will be furious. They’ll lose face and be devastated if I misbehave.” “Are you going to be forever under your parents’ control?” I voiced. “You are here to learn to take responsibility for yourself. Now is the perfect time to come into your own,” I championed. “Do something you truly desire, not what others want you to do.” The lad did not know how to respond to my suggestion. Neither did he contradict me. When Jules entreated me privately for an after-dinner stroll that evening, little did I imagine what would happen.

You are overset.” He placed the tray on the low table before them and resumed his place beside her, his expression one of resolute determination. He passed her a cup of tea, from which she ventured one sip, while a peculiar, distracted expression came over Benjamin’s face. A little patient silence stretched until he blinked and aimed a frown at her. “You will eat something, Maggie Windham. If I have to feed it to you in small bites, you will eat.” The idea of him feeding her with his own hands… It had inordinate appeal, and now that he was here, Maggie’s dyspepsia seemed to be abating. He fed her a bite of sandwich sporting butter, mustard, thinly sliced ham, and a tangy yellow cheddar. “I don’t think the ham is agreeing with me. Something about the smokiness.” He removed the ham from the sandwich and popped the meat into his mouth. “Did you get any rest at all last night?” “Some.” “Maggie…” He took her empty teacup and set it aside, then studied her for a long moment. “Come here.” She scooted over the few inches necessary to accept his embrace, all of her upset and misgivings going quiet at the feel of his arms around her. She would miss his embrace—miss it sorely, for all her remaining days and nights. “It will be all right, my love.

Miss Hathaway--” Christopher continued to object, but he fell silent, blinking, as she reached out and touched his chest. Her fingertips rested over his heart for the space of one heartbeat. “Let me try,” she said gently. Christopher fell back a step, his breath catching. His body responded to her touch with disconcerting swiftness. A lady never put her hand to any area of a man’s torso unless the circumstances were so extreme that…well, he couldn’t even imagine what would justify it. Perhaps if his waistcoat was on fire, and she was trying to put it out. Other than that, he couldn’t think of any defensible reason. And yet if he were to point out the breach of etiquette, the act of correcting a lady was just as graceless. Troubled and aroused, Christopher gave her a single nod. The men resumed their seats after Beatrix had left the room. “Forgive us, Captain Phelan,” Amelia murmured. “I can see that my sister startled you. Really, we’ve tried to learn better manners, but we’re Philistines, all of us. And while Beatrix is out of hearing, I would like to assure you that she doesn’t usually dress so outlandishly. However, every now and then she goes on an undertaking that makes long skirts inadvisable. Replacing a bird in a nest, for example, or training a horse, and so forth.” “A more conventional solution,” Christopher said carefully, “would be to forbid the activity that necessitated the wearing of men’s garments.” Rohan grinned. “One of my private rules for dealing with Hathaways,” he said, “is never to forbid them anything. Because that guarantees they’ll keep doing it.” “Heavens, we’re not as bad as all that,” Amelia protested. Rohan gave his wife a speaking glance, his smile lingering. “Hathaways require freedom,” he told Christopher, “Beatrix in particular. An ordinary life--being contained in parlors and drawing rooms--would be a prison for her. She relates to the world in a far more vital and natural way than any gadji I’ve ever known.” Seeing Christopher’s incomprehension, he added, “That’s the word the Rom uses for females of your kind.” “And because of Beatrix,” Amelia said, “we possess a menagerie of creatures no one else wants: a goat with an undershot jaw, a three-legged cat, a portly hedgehog, a mule with an unbalanced build, and so forth.” “A mule?” Christopher stared at her intently, but before he could ask about it, Beatrix returned with Albert on the leash.

On our next return to base camp, and after the best night’s sleep I had had since arriving in Nepal, I decided that I would call home on the satellite phone. At $3 a minute, I had not yet used the phone. I had enough debts already at this point. I’d originally intended to save my phone call for when and if I had a summit bid. “Mum, it’s me.” “Bear? It’s BEAR!” she shouted excitedly. It was so good just to hear the voices of those I loved. I asked for all their news. Then I told them about my narrow escape in the crevasse. “You fell in what? A crevice?” Mum questioned. “No, in a crevasse,” I enunciated. “Speak up. I can hardly hear you, darling.” She tried to quiet everyone around her, and then resumed the conversation. “Now…what was that about your crevice?” “Mum, it really doesn’t matter,” I said, laughing. “I love you.” Families are always great levelers.

Serbs don’t forget, as the graffito goes, the atrocities that the Croatian ustashas committed against them in World War II. That was repeated in school over and over by history teachers when I was a pupil in Croatia. Many Croats don’t forget the slaughters that the Serb nationalist chetniks committed on the Croatian rural population, although that lesson was passed over in silence in our history lessons. My brother-in-law—who died of stomach cancer, and who had spent the recent war two hundred yards away from the Serb border toward Vukovar, from where his street was shelled almost daily—told me that when he was a child, during World War II, he ran into a ditch full of Croatian peasants massacred by chetniks. He never forgot, and wasn’t even allowed to talk about it because he would be jailed for spreading nationalist propaganda. He told me this in the park after my father’s funeral, at a moment when we were both talking about life, death, and souls. Which is better, to forget or to remember? Of course, to remember, but not to abuse the memories as Serbian leaders have done to spur their armies into aggression against Croats and Muslims. Croats will remember Vukovar. Muslims will remember Srebrenica. And what is the lesson? Not to trust thy neighbor? But that’s perhaps where the trouble began and will resume.

This is- cricket?" she said, sounding skeptical. "What did you imagine it was? Unless you thought the actual insects were wandering about playing some sort of organized entertainment," he said, raising an eyebrow at her as he spoke. She looked at him, her blue eyes wide, and then they narrowed and her words emerged before, he would guess, she had time to consider what she was saying. And the lady from the bookstore reappeared. "You seem to think I am so idiotic that I would possibly imagine that insects would be engaged in a sporting activity." Her tone dripped with icy disdain, and he felt himself heat at the sight of her enraged. "I assure you, my lord, that simply because I have not yet had experience with things that I am not entirely stupid." She glared at him, her eyes narrowing even more. "That is what you believe, isn't it? That I am unintelligent?" She focused her attention on a small purse she'd brought along with her, opening it with shaking fingers. "I am many things, or not many things, depending on what your perspective is, but I am not stupid." She withdrew a pair of spectacles from her purse and placed them on her face, settling the wires behind her ears. "As it happens, I am poorly sighted. That much is true." And she resumed glaring at him from across the seat. "Likely you have misjudged my expression because I have a lack of vision. But since you don't seem to think very highly of me in the first place, I might as well wear my spectacles so I can see your disdain." He wanted to both applaud and kiss her all at the same time.

As the years go by and I grow older, I feel compelled to record my experiences in wartime Germany. It is important that my children, grandchildren and future generations know about the difficult times we all endured and of the horrors that existed in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Due to my advanced age and present condition, I am aware of the urgency to document my memories. If I fail in this, I will fail those who follow me, for they will never know!” Adeline Perry This book had its origin many years ago when Adeline Perry tried to recount her experiences and found that she would become overcome by her emotions every time she tried. The horrors and trials that she had experienced, plus the responsibility of raising her two daughters proved to be overwhelming. It was not until the twilight of her life when her daughters gently persuaded her to try again so that future generations might hear and perhaps learn from her experiences. In fact a good portion of these manuscripts were written while she was in the care of Hospice and only now survive because of immense personal strength and devotion to her family and the desire that what had happened to her would never happen again. Her daughter, and my wife, Ursula can take a great deal of pride in the effort it took to make these manuscripts a reality. After Adeline’s passing I had the privilege to develop the book Suppressed I Rise. Staying true to her story I gave her the authorship of the first edition of this book, which adhered to, and did not exceed what she had left in her original manuscripts. This book which was printed in limited numbers became an instant success and deserved more exposure. Readers also felt that there were questions that went unanswered requiring a follow-up. How did Adeline justify going to Germany prior to World War II? What happened to her marriage to Richard and how did she resume her own life, as a single mother, when she returned to South Africa! With additional reflections by her daughters Brigitte Grigsby and Ursula Bracker, and travel to the areas discussed in Suppressed I Rise, I expanded the book to include the prewar years. I also corrected minor contradictions and factual discrepancies that were inadvertently caused by the passage of time. Talking to people in Germany I confirmed some of what had happened including the hanging of the Russian prisoner of war. The book has now become a powerful example of not only personal courage but also of human tragedy. It is a book that I am proud to have written and share in the concept that it was a story that had to be told.

I let her drone on and on about her academic pedigree, scrolling through the pages of her resume while I let my mind escape to Elsewhere. It’s a private space I’ve had since I was a kid, and there isn’t anything particular there, but it’s quiet and there is always something more fun to do than in real life. I became very good at visiting Elsewhere, and I often saw it in my seizure dreams. The brain goes haywire when the body seizes, so why wouldn’t I see a place or dream of it? I doubt any doctor would back my claim, but that doesn’t bother me. They don’t belong in Elsewhere.

As I came around a bend, I saw a beech tree with fungi stacked like a ladder climbing upward along its south side. I stopped to inspect the tree, finding that it was diseased and littered with woodpecker holes. I wondered how I had failed to notice this sight before. I walked a few feet past the tree and turned around. Everything was identical, yet vastly different. The tree, from this perspective, looked healthy and unscathed. Had I seen the tree only from this angle, I would have thought that it was a prime specimen that would grow and flourish for many more years. When I saw the tree from the other side, though, I knew that no matter how full its leaves, the tree was doomed to death and decay. In the darkness of the preceding night, I had walked by the tree without seeing it at all. Yet even in the light of day, what I saw depended on my vantage point. I resumed my hike, thinking about how one’s perspective shapes what one sees. Because the ground was wet and muddy, I spent most of my time looking down, hardly noticing the limbs towering above me. On three hikes around this lake I had seen vastly different things, and had failed to see many things altogether. What I saw was dependent on my perspective, but my assumptions and experiences also shaped my perception.

Well, Mr. Cranton,” she said, brows raised. “When you told me you needed my gown so as to clean the sea stains and tar from it, I had no idea that you had… uh, other uses for it.” Loud guffaws met her remark. “Really, Captain O’ Devir,” she said, turning to the grinning Irishman. “Your so-called Navy has some odd ways of amusing itself.” “Odd ways that saved all of our hides,” cried a nearby seaman. “Three cheers for our captain!” “Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah!” Nerissa, confused, could only stare at them all. They’d surely lost their minds. “I expected there to be a sea fight, and I’m very glad there was not, but how did you manage to avoid getting blown to the ends of the earth, Captain O’ Devir?” He just shrugged, his eyes hungry and dark as he took in her long, willowy form, her legs clearly outlined in Midshipman Cranton’s skinny breeches. “Well, Lady Nerissa, ye’re the most valuable person on this ship and that countryman of yers back there knows it. He wouldn’t dare fire on us with you up here on deck.” “But I wasn’t up here on deck.” “Aye, precisely. But that piece of sh—… ehm, that blaggard back there, didn’t know that. Ye’ll stay in Cranton’s uniform so he doesn’t find out.” “What? What are you all talking about?” Lieutenant Morgan, chewing on a piece of dried ginger, was the one who clarified it for her. “Captain O’ Devir would never risk your life by having you up on deck where musket or cannonballs could be flying, so he had Cranton here pretend to be you.” The youth rubbed the back of his head. “Didn’t need to hit me quite so hard, sir,” he said good naturedly. “I nearly didn’t have to fake being knocked out cold.” “My heavens,” Nerissa said, as laughter greeted the youth’s remark, and immediately the sailor’s teasing resumed. “Still think you make a fetching young lady, Mr. Cranton!” “Can I call on you, my lady?” asked Tackett the sailing master, making an elegant leg to the blushing youth. “I’d love to run my fingers through your hair….” “Hell, I’d love to run mine through his cleavage.” “Hahaha!” “Shut yer gobs, ye rogues,” said Captain O’ Devir. “That’s an officer ye’re talkin’ to. Give him some respect.” More guffaws, because it was hard to give a man any respect when he stood before them in a lady’s gown, red-faced, fuming, and reaching into his bosom to tear out the other stocking. He flung it down. “My apologies, Lady Nerissa,” he said, looking like he was about to take a swing at the sailing master. “You should not have to listen to such talk.” She couldn’t help but be caught up in their high spirits. “I have brothers,” she said, smiling. “There’s not much that will offend me, I can assure you.

The night of the theatrical, Jane and Mr. Nobley secreted themselves behind the house for the final brush-up. The mood of late had let a bit of Bohemia into Regency England, the usual strict social observances bending, the rehearsals allowing the couples to slip away alone and enjoy the exhilarating intimacy of the unobserved. Mr. Nobley sat on the gravel path, leaning back on his elbow in a reluctant recline. “Oh, to die here, alone and unloved…” “That was pretty good,” Jane said. “You genuinely sounded in pain as you said it, but I think you could add a groan or two.” Mr. Nobley groaned, though perhaps not as part of the theatrical. “Perfect!” said Jane. Mr. Nobley rested his head on his knee and laughed. “I cannot believe I let you railroad me into this. I have always avoided doing a theatrical.” “Oh, you don’t seem that sorry. I mean, you certainly are sorry, just not regretful…” “Just do your part, please, Miss Erstwhile.” “Oh, yes, of course, forgive me. I can’t imagine why I’m taking so long, it’s just that there’s something so appealing about you there on the ground, at my feet--” He tackled her. He actually leaped up, grabbed her around the waist, and pulled her to the ground. She screeched as she thudded down on top of him. His hands stiffened. “Whoops,” he said. “You did not just do that.” He looked around for witnesses. “You are right, I did not just do that. But if I had, I was driven to it; no jury in the world would convict me. We had better keep rehearsing, someone might come by.” “I would, but you’re still holding me.” His hands were on her waist. They were gorgeous, thick-fingered, large. She liked them there. “So they are,” he said. Then he looked at her. He breathed in. His forehead tensed as if he were trying to think of words for his thoughts, as if he were engaged in some gorgeous inner battle that was provoked by how perfectly beautiful she was. (That last part was purely Jane’s romantic speculation and can’t be taken as literal.) Nevertheless, they were on the ground, touching, frozen, staring at each other, and even the trees were holding their breath. “I--” Jane started to say, but Mr. Nobley shook his head. He apologized and helped her to her feet, then plopped back onto the ground, as his character was still in the throes of death. “Shall we resume?” “Right, okay,” she said, shaking gravel from her skirt, “we were near the end…Oh, Antonio!” She knelt carefully beside him to keep her skirt from wrinkling and patted his chest. “You are gravely wounded. And groaning so impressively! Let me hold you and you can die in my arms, because traditionally, death and unrequited love are a romantic pairing.” “Those aren’t the lines,” he said through his teeth, as though an actual audience might overhear their practice. “They’re better than. It’s hardly Shakespeare.” “Right. So, your love revives my soul, my wounds heal…etcetera, etcetera, and I stand up and we exclaim our love dramatically. I cherish you more than farms love rain, than night loves the moon, and so on…” He pulled her upright and they stood facing each other, her hands in his. Again with the held breaths, the locked gazes. Twice in a row. It was almost too much! And Jane wanted to stay in that moment with him so much, her belly ached with the desire. “Your hands are cold,” he said, looking at her fingers. She waited. They had never practiced this part and the flimsy play gave no directions, such as, Kiss the girl, you fool. She leaned in a tiny bit. He warmed her hands. “So…” she said. “I suppose we know our scene, more or less,” he said. Was he going to kiss her? No, it seemed nobody ever kissed in Regency England. So what was happening? And what did it mean to fall in love in Austenland anyway? Jane stepped back, the weird anxiety of his nearness suddenly making her heart beat so hard it hurt.

He turns around and resumes his pace, saying over his shoulder, “Tell me. All those projects that Jimmy your CISO is pushing. Do they increase the flow of project work through the IT organization?” “No,” I quickly answer, rushing to catch up again. “Do they increase operational stability or decrease the time required to detect and recover from outages or security breaches?” I think a bit longer. “Probably not. A lot of it is just more busywork, and in most cases, the work they’re asking for is risky and actually could cause outages.” “Do these projects increase Brent’s capacity?” I laugh humorlessly. “No, the opposite. The audit issues alone could tie up Brent for the next year.” “And what would doing all of Jimmy’s projects do to WIP levels?” he asks, opening the door

I was in a turmoil. Does friendship really offer a door to love or it’s like being ‘just’ friends? She knows I am interested in her but she’ll see me just as a friend. I will hang around. She will notice me. She will find me a great guy, yet won’t think about me in that way. Moreover, I won’t be able to approach her, lacking the courage to risk our friendship. This is roughly equivalent to the scenario where a guy goes to a job interview and the company says, “You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we were looking for, but we are not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis of comparison for all other applicants. We are still going to hire somebody else who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. However, if it doesn’t work out, we will still hire somebody but not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person we hired.

A speaker was talking about the power of positive thinking and the power of words. One of the audience members raised his hand and said, “It’s not saying ‘good fortune, good fortune, good fortune’ that will make me feel better. Nor will saying ‘bad luck, bad luck, bad luck’ make me feel worse. They’re only words and by themselves have no power.” The speaker replied, “Shut up, you fool, you don’t understand a thing about this.” The audience member was stunned. His face became red, and he was tempted to reply, “You @&!!&&@!” [something I can’t say in this book]. The speaker raised his hand. “Please excuse me. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please accept my most sincere apologies.” The member of the audience calmed down. Some people in the hall murmured; others shuffled their feet. The speaker resumed. “There’s the reply to the question you asked me. A few words made you very angry. The other words calmed you down. Now do you understand the power of words?

Are you all right, Vanni?” he asked. “Hmm, just a little melancholy, that’s all.” “It’s hard to tell what’s bothering you most—Midge’s passing or some problem you’re having with Paul.” She turned to look at him and he said, “Anything you want to talk about?” She shrugged. “There’s not too much to talk about, Dad.” “You could help me understand a couple of things, you know.” “For instance?” “Oh, don’t be coy—you stood Paul up to go away with the doctor and if I know anything about you, you’re not that interested in the doctor. Hell, you’ve been in a strange mood since Paul left after Mattie was born. You knew Paul was coming for the weekend—and despite his best efforts to be circumspect, you knew he was coming for you.” “I wasn’t so sure about that.” “I heard you fight with him, Vanni. Did you and Paul have some kind of falling-out?” “Not exactly, Dad.” Walt took a breath. “Vanessa, I don’t mean to pry, but it’s pretty apparent to me how you feel about Paul. And how Paul feels about you. And yet…” “Dad, while Paul was here last autumn, we got a lot closer. We were good friends before, but of course with all we went through together… Dad, before all that happened, Paul had a life in Grants Pass. One that’s not so easily left behind.” “Vanni, Paul loves you, but something happened between you recently…” “He let me know—there are complications in Grants Pass. Something he’s been struggling with. It’s kept him from being honest about his feelings,” she said. “He has commitments, Dad.” “A woman?” Walt asked. Vanni laughed softly. “We shouldn’t be so surprised that Paul actually had women in his life, should we? Yes, apparently there was a woman. Is a woman…” “Jesus,” Walt said under his breath. “He’s not married, is he?” “Of course not. He wouldn’t keep something like that from us.” “Engaged?” “He says there’s enough of an entanglement there to make his position difficult. That’s why he wasn’t around after Mattie was born.” Walt drove in silence for a while and Vanni resumed gazing out the window. After a few moments of silence Walt asked, “What about you, Vanni? I know you care about him.” “Dad, Matt’s only been gone a few months. Should I even have such feelings? Should I be completely embarrassed? I’ll miss him forever, but I—” “Please don’t do that to yourself, honey,” he said. “Haven’t we learned by now? Life is too short to suffer needlessly.” “Will people say I—” “I don’t give a good goddamn what people say,” he growled. “Everyone is entitled to a little happiness, wherever that is. And I think for you, it’s with Paul.” She sighed and said, “I’m asking myself why I thought I had some claim on him. He was very good to us all, I’m so grateful—but why didn’t I realize that a man like Paul wouldn’t have any trouble attracting the attention—the love—of a woman? I’ve been so angry with him for not telling me, but… Why didn’t I ask?” “Now what, Vanni? Is he trying to make a choice, is that it?” “We were having a discussion, not a very pleasant one, right when the call came from Shelby. It left his intentions up in the air a bit. But there’s one thing I won’t do, I can’t do—I can’t ask Paul to choose me over a woman he has an obligation to. I tried to make it very clear, his duty to me as his best friend’s widow has expired. He doesn’t have to take care of me anymore.” “I have a feeling it’s more than duty,” Walt said. “I have a feeling it always has been…” “He has to do the right thing,” she said. “I’m not getting in the way of that. A man like Paul—he could regret the wrong decision for the rest of his life. And frankly, I don’t want to be the one left to live with his regret.” “Oh, boy. You two have some talking to do.” “No. Paul has business to take care of. I have nothing more to say about this.” *

Not long after my video deposition, I was talking to a Secret Service colleague who worked the West Wing Lobby. He had just resumed his shift after returning from his own testimony. The president had just visited him. That was extremely suspicious—my associate was spooked. “He just came out and came straight up to me like—like he was looking for me. Yeah, and he asked how I was by name. We chatted—like small talk—like normal. And then he asked how my wife and kids were.… We’ve never actually talked before.” Nothing about that was normal. It was obviously a subtle form of intimidation. The president was sending a message that he knew of the officer’s recent testimony—and perhaps was sending an even more sinister message. I certainly was glad to be at JJRTC, away from them. It was all so wild, so bizarre. Prior to that, the president didn’t seem to know my fellow officer by name. Someone—most likely the president’s attorneys—advised him to make small talk immediately after the officer testified. The president’s little “hint” spooked both of us. It confirmed to me what I suspected: That was indeed how they operated. It was reminiscent of the stories we had heard of some of the women who alleged that the president, while governor, had either raped or sexually assaulted them. In one of the stories Mrs. Clinton had homed in on the alleged victim, despite having never met her beforehand, just as the president zeroed in on the West Wing Lobby officer. I was glad to be at JJRTC, but I feared that I was not far enough away.

So, you’re perfectly fine—” “Other than the stab wound.” “Ah yes, ha ha. Sorry.” He actually said ‘ha ha’ in a way that Paul found irritating. “Still though, you and I have dealt with some difficult information and now look – we are making jokes! This has gone very well.” He resumed beaming at Paul. “Which brings me to the next issue we must address. There appears to have been an issue with the emergency contact details the nurse took from you when you were admitted.” “Oh?” “It happens all the time. People are rushing about—” “I’d been stabbed.” “You’d been stabbed. We rang the number you gave us and, apparently, it is a Chinese takeaway called the Oriental Palace.” “It’s not just a takeaway. They’ve recently expanded to include an in-dining area with ambiance.” Mrs Wu would’ve been proud. She had been answering the phone ‘Hello Oriental Palace, now including an in-dining area with ambiance’ for nearly three months. She clearly didn’t know what ambiance meant, but somebody must’ve told her the place had it, and she was damn sure going to sell it. “I see,” said Dr Sinha. “And do you have a relative working at the Oriental Palace?” “No, not as such.” Or at all. “Ask for Mickey.” “OK. Mickey who?” Paul had been dreading that question. Who really knew the second name of their regular delivery guy? Sure, Mickey had come in and nabbed the occasional smoke or life-threateningly cheap Eastern European beer on a slow Tuesday. He’d even stayed to watch half of Roxanne on DVD once, but a second name seemed like a very personal question. Mickey had told him he was not from China, and how annoyed he got when people assumed he was. Unfortunately, Paul had forgotten where Mickey was from, so that was another no-go area. “Just Mickey.” “So, no relatives you’d like us to call?” “Nope. None.” Dr Sinha was clearly uncomfortable at this. “Well, as someone from a very large family, may I say, I envy you. I spend half of my salary on birthday cards alone.

If the meaning of the mountain range overlooking the home’s peace is called the Quteniqua Mountains, which is rally made up of the Langeberg Range (northeast of Worcester) and the Tsitsikamma Mountains (east-west along The Garden Route), and if the collective name of the mountain range references the idea of honey, the honey that can be found at Amanda and Lena’s home starts with kindness, a type of kindness the touches the world’s core understanding of compassion. “I want to give you a used copy of my favorite book that I think helps to explain what exactly I love about this area. Out of all of her books, this is probably one of the least favorite books based off readers’ choice, yet it is my favorite book because I think it truly understands the spirit of this area.” Amanda handed me the book. “Da-lene Mat-thee,” I said. “Is that correct…” Before I could finish, she had already answered my question. “Yes, the author that I had spoken about earlier today. Although she is an Afrikaans author, this book is in English. The Mulberry Forest. My favorite character is Silas Miggel, the headstrong Afrikaans man who didn’t want to have the Italian immigrants encroaching onto his part of the forest.” She paused for a second before resuming, “Yet, he’s the one who came to their rescue when the government turned a blind eye on the hardships of the Italian immigrants. He’s the one who showed kindness toward them even when he didn’t feel that way in his heart. That’s what kindness is all about, making time for our follow neighbors because it’s the right thing to do, full stop. Silas is the embodiment of what I love about the people of this area. It is also what I love about my childhood home growing up in the shantytown. The same thread of tenacity can be found in both places. So, when you read about Silas, think of me because he represents the heart of both Knysna and the Storms River Valley. This area contains a lot of clones just like him, the heartbeat of why this area still stands today.” That’s the kind of hope that lights up the sky. The Portuguese called the same mountain range Serra de Estrellla or Mountain of the Star… If we want to change the world, we should follow in the Quteniqua Mountain’s success, and be a reminder that human benevolence is a star that lights up the sky of any galaxy, the birthplace of caring. As we drove away, for a second, I thought I heard the quiet whispers from Dalene Matthee’s words when she wrote in Fiela’s Child: “If he had to wish, what would he wish for, he asked himself. What was there to wish for…a wish asked for the unattainable. The impossible.” And that’s what makes this area so special, a space grounded in the impossibility held together through single acts of human kindness, the heart of the Garden Route’s greatest accomplishment. A story for all times…simply called, Hospitality, the Garden Route way…

I scrubbed at the mirror harder and wondered how Tyler cleaned the one in his bathroom.  Or if he had someone else do it for him. Someone like Oksana. “Oksana, Oksana, Oksana,” I muttered as I continued cleaning the mirror. It was weird to be so deeply jealous of someone I knew nothing about. I had just finished up when I heard a noise. I figured it was Pigeon, but then she came in to sit on the floor next to my feet. She was whimpering. Which meant . . . I went down the hallway and found Oksana in the kitchen. I tried not to gasp. I’d chanted her name and had accidentally summoned her. She had spread groceries all over the counter. A large pot sat on the stove, and I heard bubbles popping, as if something was boiling. For all that was holy, I hoped it wasn’t a bunny. Whatever it was, it smelled a little like dirt and sulfur. Wasn’t that how brimstone was supposed to smell? Maybe she was cooking up something for her good buddy, Satan. “Hello.” I smiled and waved at her. She had a cigarette hanging from her lower lip. She paused from cutting up a head of cabbage to glare at me and then resumed her cutting. When it was obvious she wasn’t going to respond, I opted to be more direct. “What are you doing here?” Did somebody accidentally leave the gates of hell unlocked? I hoped I didn’t come across as too accusatory. I was genuinely bewildered to find her in my apartment again. Her eyebrows went up, as if my question were stupid. “Cooking.” “Oh. So, what are you, uh, making there?” “Borscht.” That was a kind of soup if I remembered correctly. “What do you use to make borscht?” She glared at me again, obviously not in the mood to talk, and it kind of surprised me when she answered. She held the large knife she was using against her shoulder, making me feel the tiniest bit of fear. “Beets. Cabbage. Knucklebones. And other things.” Knucklebones? Like . . . from people? What other animals had knuckles? This concerned me. “Well, that sounds . . . great. Have fun. I’m going to go clean.” She so didn’t care what I was going to do. I wanted to ask her not to smoke because I was a big fan of my own lungs and breathing in general, but I didn’t know if I had the authority to say so. I scampered away, trying not to think about how unfair it was that she not only looked that way but could cook, too. She’d probably never stick a cast-iron pan in the dishwasher.

Mum thought I was joking,” Tyler said with a laugh. His eyes were stinging, so he pressed them against Nick’s shoulder. “Fucking joking.” “About what?” Nick said, running his fingers through Tyler’s hair. “I told her that I was bi, and she told me to grow up.” He felt Nick go rigid against him. “You told her you are bi?” Tyler nodded. Nick’s fingers resumed stroking his hair, his other arm tightening around Tyler. “You were very brave,” he said. “You did well, love.

I followed her. Only, since I now had ice skates on, I couldn’t follow very quickly. “Wait!” I called. Erica stopped by the entrance to the ice rink. We were now close enough to the guy with the newspaper that she had to resume her teenage girl act again. “What is it, pumpkin?” I lowered my voice. “The hotel is crawling with guards. You’ll never be able to get into Shang’s room.” Erica smiled at me in a way I knew was pretend but that still melted my heart. “Oh, sweetie.” She sighed. “You’re so cute when you worry about me. But I’ll be fine. They won’t see me because of the diversion.” “What diversion?” I asked, suddenly feeling very worried. “This one,” Erica said, and shoved me onto the ice. I had ice-skated a few times before, so I might have been all right if Erica hadn’t caught me so off guard. Or shoved me so hard. Or sent me onto the rink backward.

There was a silence, and then Tuppence burst out: ‘Money, money, money! I think about money morning, noon and night! I dare say it’s mercenary of me, but there it is!’ ‘Same here,’ agreed Tommy with feeling. ‘I’ve thought over every imaginable way of getting it too,’ continued Tuppence. ‘There are only three! To be left it, to marry it, or to make it. First is ruled out. I haven’t got any rich elderly relatives. Any relatives I have are in homes for decayed gentlewomen! I always help old ladies over crossings, and pick up parcels for old gentlemen, in case they should turn out to be eccentric millionaires. But not one of them has ever asked me my name—and quite a lot never said “Thank you.”’ There was a pause. ‘Of course,’ resumed Tuppence, ‘marriage is my best chance. I made up my mind to marry money when I was quite young. Any thinking girl would! I’m not sentimental, you know.’ She paused. ‘Come now, you can’t say I’m sentimental,’ she added sharply. ‘Certainly not,’ agreed Tommy hastily. ‘No one would ever think of sentiment in connection with you.’ ‘That’s not very polite,’ replied Tuppence. ‘But I dare say you mean it all right. Well, there it is! I’m ready and willing—but I never meet any rich men! All the boys I know are about as hard up as I am.’ ‘What about the general?’ inquired Tommy. ‘I fancy he keeps a bicycle shop in time of peace,’ explained Tuppence. ‘No, there it is! Now you could marry a rich girl.’ ‘I’m like you. I don’t know any.’ ‘That doesn’t matter. You can always get to know one. Now, if I see a man in a fur coat come out of the Ritz I can’t rush up to him and say: “Look here, you’re rich. I’d like to know you.”’ ‘Do you suggest that I should do that to a similarly garbed female?’ ‘Don’t be silly. You tread on her foot, or pick up her handkerchief, or something like that. If she thinks you want to know her she’s flattered, and will manage it for you somehow.’ ‘You overrate my manly charms,’ murmured Tommy. ‘On the other hand,’ proceeded Tuppence, ‘my millionaire would probably run for his life! No—marriage is fraught with difficulties. Remains—to make money!’ ‘We’ve tried that, and failed,’ Tommy reminded her. ‘We’ve tried all the orthodox ways, yes. But suppose we try the unorthodox. Tommy, let’s be adventurers!’ ‘Certainly,’ replied Tommy cheerfully. ‘How do we begin?’ ‘That’s the difficulty. If we could make ourselves known, people might hire us to commit crimes for them.’ ‘Delightful,’ commented Tommy. ‘Especially coming from a clergyman’s daughter!’ ‘The moral guilt,’ Tuppence pointed out, ‘would be theirs—not mine. You must admit that there’s a difference between stealing a diamond necklace for yourself and being hired to steal it.’ ‘There wouldn’t be the least difference if you were caught!’ ‘Perhaps not. But I shouldn’t be caught. I’m so clever.’ ‘Modesty always was your besetting sin,’ remarked Tommy. ‘Don’t rag. Look here, Tommy, shall we really? Shall we form a business partnership?’ ‘Form a company for the stealing of diamond necklaces?’ ‘That was only an illustration. Let’s have a—what do you call it in book-keeping?’ ‘Don’t know. Never did any.’ ‘I have—but I always got mixed up, and used to put credit entries on the debit side, and vice versa—so they fired me out. Oh, I know—a joint venture! It struck me as such a romantic phrase to come across in the middle of musty old figures. It’s got an Elizabethan flavour about it—makes one think of galleons and doubloons. A joint venture!’ ‘Trading under the name of the Young Adventurers, Ltd.? Is that your idea, Tuppence?’ ‘It’s all very well to laugh, but I feel there might be something in it.

Thus begins my only sustained conversation in the Grand Canyon, as the man and I walk the second half of South Kaibab Trail together. I learn he’s on his way to a water treatment plant at the Colorado River. “I treat sewage water and recycle it to use at Phantom Ranch,” he explains. A self-described “Steward of the Grand Canyon,” he’s been doing this work all his life – a job he took over from his uncle and grandfather before him. “No matter the weather I hike to the plant every other week,” he says. “I stay for about a week at a time.” This week he’s on a special mission to train some new “young bucks” in the art of water treatment. “They never last,” he shakes his head. “They think they know what they’re getting into, and then reality hits when it gets cold.” He pauses, staring down the emerald Colorado River snaking below us. Then he swings around, looking me straight in the eyes, “I have given up everything I love for this canyon.” He resumes his speed walk as I trail clumsily behind him, trying to keep up. My bike bounces on my back.

Thank you,” I said, and I resumed my shivering, gazing up into the sky until dawn broke through and the stars themselves started to fade. I couldn’t sleep for even a minute that night. All that night I lay up shivering and thinking about the brevity of life. How one misstep can take any of us out of the game indefinitely. I thought about the style of life I’d chosen and where it had led me. I hoped with all my might that I’d be able to change.

Every man worthy of the name,” Orsini repeated, almost with despair, with a last outburst of rage and scorn; and he was silent for a long time, as if to emphasize the enormity of such a claim. It proclaimed, also, he then went on, after taking a deep breath, that "the time for pride is finished, and that we must turn with far more humility and understanding toward the other animal species, “different, but not inferior” "Different, but not inferior,” Orsini re- peated again, with a kind of exasperated relish. And it went on like that; “Man on this planet has reached the point where really he needs all the friendship he can find, and in his loneliness he has need of all the elephants, all the dogs and all the birds . . Orsini gave vent to a strange laugh, a sort of triumphant sneer, entirely devoid of gaiety. “It is time to show that we are capable of preserving this gigantic, clumsy, natural splendor which still lives in our midst . . . that there is still room among us for such a freedom” He fell silent, but they could feel his voice lurking in the blackness, ready to hurl itself on the first prey that offered. There you had a man, he resumed, who for months had been«going about the bush, who penetrated to the remotest villages and who, having learned several dialects while he fraternized with the natives, was devoting himself to an obstinate and dangerous work, undermining the good name of the white man. Western civilization was obviously being represented to the Africans as an immense bankruptcy from which they must at all costs try to escape. They were not far from being begged to go back to cannibalism as a lesser evil than modem science with its weapons of destmction, or from being encouraged to worship their stone idols, with which indeed, as if by chance, people like Morel were stuffing the museums of the world. No, mademoiselle, I don't capture elephants. I content myself with living among them. I like them. I like looking at them, listening to them, watching them on the horizon. To tell you the truth, I’d give anything to become an elephant myself. I’ll convince you that I’ve nothing against the Germans in particular: they’re just men to me, and that’s enough. . . . Give me a rum.

The Under-Informed… I saw this continuously when I was a job seeker. I’d call a friend working for a great company and make the mistake of asking him, “Do you know of any good job opportunities at your company?” He responded, “Oh no, they’ve been eliminating jobs for years.” After hanging up, I went to his employer’s career site and found page upon page of good jobs, many of which I could apply for. When you worked for your last employer, did you know anything about open positions outside of your department? Unless you worked in HR or were actively looking for a new position there, you knew nothing. It’s easy to think, “They work there, and they’re closer to it than I am, so they should know.” In reality, they rarely know more than you. If they do know more, it’s rarely a full picture of all of the opportunities. TAKEAWAY 1. Don’t ask people who don’t know. 2. Don’t listen to people who don’t know. Believe me, everyone and their brother, cousin, great aunt (you get the idea) will be only too happy to give you their opinions. So, after you’ve read the resume section and created your resume, and one of these people tells you, “You’ve done it all wrong,” ask that person, “When was the last time you hired someone? When was the last time you interviewed someone?” If you don’t feel inclined to pose these questions, make a beeline for the door or turn up the volume on your ear buds. A few years ago when I was in between roles, I messaged a former co-worker and made the mistake of asking her about jobs in the Tampa Bay area. She replied, “There are no jobs in Tampa Bay.” She was obviously misinformed or at least under-informed, because I had a phone interview for a position in Tampa Bay the next day. In short, don’t be quick to assume that the people you’re communicating with are the best source of information. Do you really want to make what could be life-impacting decisions based on people whose knowledge is limited?

Bigfoot understood — as I came to understand — that character is far more important than skills or employment history. And he recognized character — good and bad — brilliantly. He understood, and taught me, that a guy who shows up every day on time, never calls in sick, and does what he said he was going to do, is less likely to fuck you in the end than a guy who has an incredible resume but is less than reliable about arrival time. Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don't have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they're going to do — and everyone else. He'd lift ex-junkie sleazeballs out of the gutter and turn them into trusted managers, guys who'd kill themselves rather than misuse one thin dime of Bigfoot receipts. He'd get Mexicans right off the boat, turn them into solid citizens with immigration lawyers, nice incomes and steady employment. But if Bigfoot calls them at four in the morning, wanting them to put in a rooftop patio, they'd better be prepared to roll out of bed and get busy quarrying limestone.

I think I arrived just in time,” Leo announced a second before he grabbed a swinging Jeoff. Leo plopped Arabella’s brother onto the couch. “Stay or I’ll sit on you.” A wise man— some of the time— Jeoff didn’t budge. “You were told,” Hayder taunted. “Don’t make me duct tape your mouth again.” Count on Leo to take the wind out of Hayder’s sail. Few people argued with the massive man. Nor did anyone ever tell him to leave, even if Hayder really wished both Leo and Jeoff would go so he could resume the interesting moment he’d shared with Arabella just before all hell broke loose. Alas, judging by Arabella’s guarded expression, that sensual moment was gone. He’d have to find another way to recapture it. But first he needed to convince Jeoff to let her stay, as well as get Leo to depart— without enforcing an omega-calming moment— and have Arabella lose the rounded shoulders as they fought over her. Poor baby. How overwhelming this must be for her. How upsetting. And partially his fault. Shit. Ignoring the others, Hayder dropped to his knees in front of her. “I’m sorry, baby. Don’t get upset. I promise to behave. After all, it’s normal your brother would want to protect you, and I shouldn’t have beaten the hell out of him for it.” “I think it was the other way around, cat,” Jeoff muttered. “Shhh!” Leo said in a loud whisper. “He’s apologizing. Don’t ruin it.” Arabella’s gaze briefly met Hayder’s. “It’s okay.” “No, it’s obviously not. I can see you’re disturbed. You know I didn’t mean for that to happen. I never meant to upset you.” “I’m not upset about the fight.” Her lips twitched into a small smile. “Boys will be boys, my mom used to say. I’m just sorry to cause all this trouble. Jeoff’s right. I shouldn’t be here.” “Ha. Told you so.” Jeoff crowed in triumph. “And I shouldn’t be with his pack either. With this danger hanging over me, I should flee the country and keep my problems away from all of you.” Leave? He meant to say no, but his lion spoke first. More like rawr-ed. And in reply? She sneezed. A few times as a matter of fact. “What’s wrong with you?” Jeoff asked his sister. “Stupid allergies,” she grumbled. Jeoff snickered. “You still suffering from those? That’s hilarious. And yet the cat thinks you’re true mates?” “She’s mine, and a little sneeze and spit won’t change that.” “Is he completely insane?” Jeoff muttered. “Utterly, but the doctors say he’s not a danger to himself or the pride. But I wouldn’t push him. And given these two are talking about the future, a future that isn’t ours to decide, we should leave them to work things out,” Leo politely suggested. “But—” Jeoff never got a chance to finish that thought because Leo had spoken. And when Leo spoke, he acted. “No buts. You. Come.” Leo grabbed a hold of Arabella’s brother, tossed him over a shoulder, and marched him out with a tossed, “Don’t you screw anything up with the girl. I’d hate to have to come back and teach you a lesson.

I’ll be damned if I have to win her approval before making decisions about my estate.” “Unlike either of us, she has a conscience. It won’t hurt you at all to hear her opinion. Especially since she happens to be right.” “You just said you agreed with my position!” “From a practical standpoint. Morally, Kathleen is right.” West watched as his brother prowled away from the table and back again, pacing like a caged tiger. “You have to understand something about her,” he said. “She’s spirited on the surface, but sensitive at the core. If you show her just a little consideration--” “I don’t need you to explain her to me.” “I know her better than you,” West said sharply. “I’ve been living with her, for God’s sake.” That earned him a chilling glance. “Do you want her?” Devon asked brusquely. West was baffled by the question, which seemed to have come from nowhere. “Want her? In the biblical sense? Of course not, she’s a widow. Theo’s widow. How could anyone…” His voice faded as he saw that Devon had resumed pacing, his expression murderous. Thunderstruck, West realized what the most likely reason was for all the free-floating hostility and high-riding tension between Devon and Kathleen. He closed his eyes briefly. This was bad. Bad for everyone, bad for the future, just bloody awful compounding badness in all directions.

When we thought you were dead, we searched for your body. Months, years even. You were never out of our thoughts. You were my family, Jacques, my friend. It was hard to learn to be completely solitary. Gregori and Mikhail and even Aidan survived the centuries because, as alone as they had to be, they had a bond, an anchor to keep them strong through the bleak centuries. You were mine. Once you were gone, my struggle became immense.” When Jacques remained silently on guard, Shea pushed at his back. Can’t you hear his grief? He’s reaching out to you. Even if you can’t remember him, help him. You do not know if he has turned or not, Jacques reprimanded her. You felt the presence, and here he is. A vampire can give the illusion of purity, of anything he chooses. Stay behind me! “I just wanted to tell you I am glad you are back, and I am happy for you that you found your lifemate. It was wrong of me to be envious. I should have been more cautious about judging what I did not understand.” Byron raked a hand through his dark hair. “I am going away for a while. I must to gain the strength to get through the years.” Jacques nodded slowly. “I am going to the healer to try to repair the damage done to my mind. I have noticed Gregori’s relationship with Mikhail seems to be strong even though Mikhail has a lifemate. I would wish that if all that you say is true, when I am healed, we can resume our friendship.” The wild winds were dying down. The rain beat down in a steady drone, and the air seemed heavily oppressed. Byron nodded tiredly and managed a wan smile that did not light his eyes. “I wish the best for you both, and I hope that you have many children. Try to make them female for my sake.” “When will you return?” Jacques inquired. “When I am able.” Byron’s form began to waver, to fade, so that they could see through the transparent shape.

There are so many people today who complain about absolutely everything,' Martina Ruzickova-Jelinkova told me once. 'Yet this woman, who had so much to complain about, never did. I find it very moving.' So, suddenly, do I. Lata was extraordinary not just in what she achieved but in how she lived. She gave what she had to give dreamed and chased improbable dreams, suffered what she had to suffer, and did what she believed was her duty. Each time she encountered a setback, she picked herself up and resumed her journey. She never complained; just quiet endured what was asked of her, as a solider does; or -- in another biblical phrase that must have been to familiar to her -- as a good and faithful servant does.

I returned home the evening before Adelaide Modine’s body was found and I attended the autopsy. Call it gruesome curiosity. Now, I’m sorry, Mr. Parker, but I have nothing more to say and a great deal of work to do.” He led me to the door and pushed open the screen to let me out. “You don’t seem particularly anxious to help me find Catherine Demeter, Mr. Hyams.” He breathed in heavily. “Who suggested that you talk to me, Mr. Parker?” “Alvin Martin mentioned your name.” “Mr. Martin is a good, conscientious deputy and an asset to this town, but he is still a comparatively recent arrival,” said Hyams. “The reason why I am reluctant to talk is a matter of client confidentiality. Mr. Parker, I am the only lawyer in this town. At some point, nearly everyone who lives here, regardless of color, income, religious or political belief, has passed through the door of my office. That includes the parents of the children who died. I know a great deal about what happened here, Mr. Parker, more than I might wish to know and certainly much more than I plan to share with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the end of the matter.” “I see. One more thing, Mr. Hyams.” “Yes?” he asked, wearily. “Sheriff Granger lives on this road too, doesn’t he?” “Sheriff Granger lives next door, the house on the right here. This house has never been burgled, Mr. Parker, a fact that is surely not unconnected. Good night.” He stood at the screen door as I drove away. I cast a glance at the sheriff’s house as I passed but there were no lights within and there was no car in the yard. As I drove back to Haven, raindrops began to strike the windshield and by the time I reached the outskirts of the town it had turned into a harsh, ceaseless downpour. The lights of the motel appeared through the rain. I could see Rudy Fry standing at the door, staring out into the woods and the gathering darkness beyond. By the time I had parked, Fry had resumed his position behind the reception desk. “What do folks do around here for fun, apart from trying to run other folks out of town?” I asked. Fry grimaced as he tried to separate the sarcasm from the substance of the question. “There ain’t much to do around here outside of drinking at the Inn,” he replied,

I have almost five hundred dollars saved.” Alison spoke slowly and deliberately. This time Laura did pull away. “Five hundred dollars?” Her eyes were incredulous. “How did you ever save that much?” Then, before Alison could answer, Laura’s eyes widened again and she let out a faint squeal. Mom half-turned to the back again, and Alison could tell that Laura was fighting to keep a normal look about her. After Mom had resumed her road watching, Laura finally spoke. “Just think of all the things we can buy on vacation,” she spouted. “Cotton candy at the carnival, model horses, saltwater taffy, postcards…We can even ride all the rides, more than once!” Alison shook her head and sighed again. “Let me remind you that this isn’t your money.” “It is if you want me to keep it a secret,” Laura challenged. “Why, you little rat!” “Well, it’s mostly yours,” Laura conceded. Alison rolled her eyes in exasperation. If she hadn’t needed her sister on her side she’d have been tempted to rap her. She tapped Laura on the top of her red head. “Think about it,” she prodded. “What could we buy with five hundred dollars?” All at once a light filled Laura’s eyes. All right, Alison thought. Laura is finally awake! “A pony!” The words slid from Laura in a hiss. “Are you going to buy a pony at the Pony Penning auction?” This time it was Alison who settled back smugly in her seat. “Every year we ask Mom and Dad, and every year they say we can’t afford one,” she said softly. “Now I have the money. How can they possibly say no?

Free-will is thus a general cosmological theory of PROMISE, just like the Absolute, God, Spirit or Design. Taken abstractly, no one of these terms has any inner content, none of them gives us any picture, and no one of them would retain the least pragmatic value in a world whose character was obviously perfect from the start. Elation at mere existence, pure cosmic emotion and delight, would, it seems to me, quench all interest in those speculations, if the world were nothing but a lubberland of happiness already. Our interest in religious metaphysics arises in the fact that our empirical future feels to us unsafe, and needs some higher guarantee. If the past and present were purely good, who could wish that the future might possibly not resemble them? Who could desire free-will? Who would not say, with Huxley, "let me be wound up every day like a watch, to go right fatally, and I ask no better freedom." 'Freedom' in a world already perfect could only mean freedom to BE WORSE, and who could be so insane as to wish that? To be necessarily what it is, to be impossibly aught else, would put the last touch of perfection upon optimism's universe. Surely the only POSSIBILITY that one can rationally claim is the possibility that things may be BETTER. That possibility, I need hardly say, is one that, as the actual world goes, we have ample grounds for desiderating. Free-will thus has no meaning unless it be a doctrine of RELIEF. As such, it takes its place with other religious doctrines. Between them, they build up the old wastes and repair the former desolations. Our spirit, shut within this courtyard of sense-experience, is always saying to the intellect upon the tower: 'Watchman, tell us of the night, if it aught of promise bear,' and the intellect gives it then these terms of promise. Other than this practical significance, the words God, free-will, design, etc., have none. Yet dark tho they be in themselves, or intellectualistically taken, when we bear them into life's thicket with us the darkness THERE grows light about us. If you stop, in dealing with such words, with their definition, thinking that to be an intellectual finality, where are you? Stupidly staring at a pretentious sham! wherein is such a definition really instructive? It means less, than nothing, in its pompous robe of adjectives. Pragmatism alone can read a positive meaning into it, and for that she turns her back upon the intellectualist point of view altogether. 'God's in his heaven; all's right with the world!'—THAT'S the heart of your theology, and for that you need no rationalist definitions. Why shouldn't we all of us, rationalists as well as pragmatists, confess this? Pragmatism, so far from keeping her eyes bent on the immediate practical foreground, as she is accused of doing, dwells just as much upon the world's remotest perspectives. See then how all these ultimate questions turn, as it were, up their hinges; and from looking backwards upon principles, upon an erkenntnisstheoretische Ich, a God, a Kausalitaetsprinzip, a Design, a Free-will, taken in themselves, as something august and exalted above facts,—see, I say, how pragmatism shifts the emphasis and looks forward into facts themselves. The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself? The centre of gravity of philosophy must therefore alter its place. The earth of things, long thrown into shadow by the glories of the upper ether, must resume its rights. To shift the emphasis in this way means that philosophic questions will fall to be treated by minds of a less abstractionist type than heretofore, minds more scientific and individualistic in their tone yet not irreligious either.

Even though the Hudson-Nabors wedding was pure fantasy, the rumors surrounding it ended up causing some very real damage: CBS canceled The Jim Nabors Hour in 1971. While it’s been suggested that Nabors’s highly rated program fell victim to the network’s “rural purge,” many believe that the backlash from the gay marriage story doomed the show. Then there was the Rock Hudson version of damage control. “I’ll tell you one thing that makes me sad about this, and that’s that Jim Nabors and I are no longer friends. We can’t be seen together,” Hudson told a reporter in the early 1970s. Though even after the rumors had subsided, Hudson chose not to resume his friendship with Nabors.

will dampen a parade real quick. Everyone goes home. Deeply distressed, David returns to Jerusalem. The ark is kept at the home of Obed-Edom while David sorts things out. Apparently, he succeeds, because at the end of three months David returns, reclaims the ark, and resumes the parade. This time there is no death. There is dancing. David enters Jerusalem with rejoicing. And “David danced before the Lord with all his might” (6:14). Uzzah’s tragedy teaches this: God comes on his own terms. Two men. One dead. The other dancing. What do they teach us? Specifically, what do they teach us about invoking the presence of God? This is what David wants to know: “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” (6:9). In the story of David and his giants, this is one giant-size issue. Is God a distant deity?

Hey, English," she said softly. "Some hero you turned out to be. You know, you could've told me you were about to pass out down there in that tank. We'd have relieved you." His eyes opened partway and he smiled up at her weakly. "Thought you'd go for the hero type. Wanted to impress you." She reached up to smooth the damp hair off his forehead. "Oh, I'm impressed all right. Right down to my toes." One corner of his mouth tilted up faintly. "Glad to hear it. I'm pretty impressed by you, too. Who'd have guessed? Women commandos..." His voice trailed off. "Sleep now," she urged him quietly. "You and I are going to have all the time in the world to compare resumes once you're feeling better." His eyelids cracked open a fraction, sluggishly, as if it was a tremendous effort to do so. "Promise?" he mumbled. "Yeah. I promise.