Teeth Movie Quotes

I want it all, Emily. I want to spend my nights holding hands with you,” he breathed the words into her ear. “I want the all-day texting.” He kissed her temple and caressed her cheek. “I want the laughing and the forehead kisses.” He softly ran his lips over her forehead. “I want the date nights, the movie watching, and the breakfast making.” He dragged his hands through her hair, his teeth tugging gently at her bottom lip. “I want the late-night drives, the sunset watching, the screaming, the yelling, and the crying.” Still kissing her, he smiled against her mouth. “I know I’ll definitely want the make up sex that comes after the screaming and the crying. In want the good, the bad and e in between. All of it is what's going to make us amazing together,

I think I’m under control, that I’ve stripped away all weaknesses. That committing to my mission has made me impervious. I’m wrong. The thought of Barrons smiling brings other thoughts. Barrons naked. Dancing. Dark head thrown back. Laughing. The image doesn’t “gently swim up in my mind” in a dreamy sort of way, like I’ve seen in movies. No, this one slams into my head like a nuclear missile, exploding in my brain in graphic detail. I suffocate in a mushroom cloud of pain. I can’t breathe. I squeeze my eyes shut. White teeth flashing in his dark face: I get knocked down but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down. I stagger. But he didn’t get up, the bastard. He stayed down.

In movies, it's all beautifully choreographed, set to an increasingly dramatic soundtrack. In movies, when the boy pulls the girl to him when they are both finally undressed, they never bump their teeth together and get embarrassed and have to laugh and try again. But here's the truth: In movies, it's never half so lovely as it is here and now with Jase.

Jennifer to Beth: Ech. I don't like Tom Cruise. Beth to Jennifer: Me neither. But I usually like Tom Cruise movies. Jennifer to Beth: Me too... Huh, maybe I do like Tom Cruise. But I hate feeling pressured to find him attractive. I don't. Beth to Jennifer: Nobody does. It's a lie perpetuated by the American media. Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts. Jennifer to Beth: Men don't like Julia Roberts? Beth to Jennifer: Nope. Her teeth scare them. Jennifer to Beth: Good to know.

April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April. In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass....but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind. At those times I would write to Naoko. In my letters to her, I would describe only things that were touching or pleasant or beautiful: the fragrance of grasses, the caress of a spring breeze, the light of the moon, a movie I'd seen, a song I liked, a book that had moved me. I myself would be comforted by letters like this when I would reread what I had written. And I would feel that the world I lived in was a wonderful one. I wrote any number of letters like this, but from Naoko or Reiko I heart nothing.

He said, “I know somebody you could kiss.” “Who?” She realized his eyes were amused. “Oh, wait.” He shrugged. He was maybe the only person Blue knew who could preserve the integrity of a shrug while lying down. “It’s not like you’re going to kill me. I mean, if you were curious.” She hadn’t thought she was curious. It hadn’t been an option, after all. Not being able to kiss someone was a lot like being poor. She tried not to dwell on the things she couldn’t have. But now— “Okay,” she said. “What?” “I said okay.” He blushed. Or rather, because he was dead, he became normal colored. “Uh.” He propped himself on an elbow. “Well.” She unburied her face from the pillow. “Just, like—” He leaned toward her. Blue felt a thrill for a half a second. No, more like a quarter second. Because after that she felt the too-firm pucker of his tense lips. His mouth mashed her lips until it met teeth. The entire thing was at once slimy and ticklish and hilarious. They both gasped an embarrassed laugh. Noah said, “Bah!” Blue considered wiping her mouth, but felt that would be rude. It was all fairly underwhelming. She said, “Well.” “Wait,” Noah replied, “waitwaitwait.” He pulled one of Blue’s hairs out of his mouth. “I wasn’t ready.” He shook out his hands as if Blue’s lips were a sporting event and cramping was a very real possibility. “Go,” Blue said. This time they only got within a breath of each other’s lips when they both began to laugh. She closed the distance and was rewarded with another kiss that felt a lot like kissing a dishwasher. “I’m doing something wrong?” she suggested. “Sometimes it’s better with tongue,” he replied dubiously. They regarded each other. Blue squinted, “Are you sure you’ve done this before?” “Hey!” he protested. “It’s weird for me, ‘cause it’s you.” “Well, it’s weird for me because it’s you.” “We can stop.” “Maybe we should.” Noah pushed himself up farther on his elbow and gazed at the ceiling vaguely. Finally, he dropped his eyes back to her. “You’ve seen, like, movies. Of kisses, right? Your lips need to be, like, wanting to be kissed.” Blue touched her mouth. “What are they doing now?” “Like, bracing themselves.” She pursed and unpursed her lips. She saw his point. “So imagine one of those,” Noah suggested. She sighed and sifted through her memories until she found one that would do. It wasn’t a movie kiss, however. It was the kiss the dreaming tree had showed her in Cabeswater. Her first and only kiss with Gansey, right before he died. She thought about his nice mouth when he smiled. About his pleasant eyes when he laughed. She closed her eyes. Placing an elbow on the other side of her head, Noah leaned close and kissed her once more. This time, it was more of a thought than a feeling, a soft heat that began at her mouth and unfurled through the rest of her. One of his cold hands slid behind her neck and he kissed her again, lips parted. It was not just a touch, an action. It was a simplification of both of them: They were no longer Noah Czerny and Blue Sargent. They were now just him and her. Not even that. They were only the time that they held between them.

When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don’t know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up. I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, ‘cause I didn’t want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I’d always find them.

I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table.I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavour of naval uniforms. I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.

And you'll walk in rolling your eyes and you'll walk out whistling sadly through your teeth because the fuel of the Nerd Mafia is disappointment and exclusion. - On the Watchmen movie

Try to roll with the punches. Keep your chin up. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Vote Democrat in every election. Ride your bike in the park. Dream about my perfect, golden body. Take your vitamins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Pull for the Mets. Watch a lot of movies. Don’t work too hard at your job. Take a trip to Paris with me. Come to the hospital when Rachel has her baby and hold my grandchild in your arms. Brush your teeth after every meal. Don’t cross the street on a red light. Defend the little guy. Stick up for yourself. Remember how beautiful you are. Remember how much I love you. Drink one Scotch on the rocks every day. Breathe deeply. Keep your eyes open. Stay away from fatty foods. Sleep the sleep of the just. Remember how much I love you.

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward. Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves.

He smiled without his teeth. Small, shyly. I found myself smiling back. Like an impulse Then he ruined it by saying… "You're not like other girls, are you?" And I activated. Every single emotion I'd been squashing into my guts exploded like a burst appendix. I jumped off the bed and turned to him with a scowl I was sure he'd need permanent therapy to recover from. "Are you kidding me Harry?" "Woah Audrey. Hey, hey, hey. It's a compliment." I felt like screaming. "It's NOT a compliment. I threw my arms up, any motion to get rid of the rage pulsing through me. It's an insult to every single woman on this PLANET. Don't you DARE try and pull that shit on me. "What shit?!" Harry was stupid enough to ask. "I was saying something nice…" I shook my head so hard. "No, you were saying something clichéd and UNTRUE. I AM like other girls, Harry. Don't misinterpret my hatred of romance as some kooky, laid-back, manic pixie NONSENSE. I am DAMAGED. I am not CUTE. I am emotionally-fucking-traumatised right now, okay? I am screaming on the inside. I am too angry and messed up to contain all the stuff girls spend every day containing. That's why I seem different. That is NOT sexy.

This is the problem with horror movies: Everyone knows what's coming next but actions have momentum, every decision an equal and justified reaction. Just because you know you should, doesn't mean that you can, stop.

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence in which I contemplate what might happen next. Maybe like the villain in a movie, this is where she gives me a long spiel about her hard-up life before she kills me. Not that I totally believe she’s nefarious. Real life isn’t made up of heroes and villains. Just ordinary people making choices they have to live with.

The best monster films don't just parade some sort of terrifying beast in front of your eyes. They pull at a hidden element of your mind, a part that feels ugly, or afraid, or lonely. They give it flesh and blood, and sometimes sharp teeth. The power of a monster movie is in seeing that dark part of you running around on-screen. You get to watch it wreak the havoc and devastation you should never effect in real life. It's cathartic to see what happens if you let that part of yourself loose instead of shunning it and banishing it to its own Black Lagoon.

Hello," Lilly said."Movie. Of your life.You were portrayed as shy and awkward." "I am shy and awkward," I reminded her. "They made your grandmother all kindly and sympathetic to your plight," Lilly said."It was the grossest mischaracterization I've seen since Shakespeare in Love tried to pass off the Bard as a hottie with a six-pack and a full set of teeth.

I don’t have any regrets,” a famous movie actor said in an interview I recently witnessed. “I’d live everything over exactly the same way.” “That’s really pathetic,” the talk show host said. “Are you seeking help?” “Yeah. My shrink says we’re making progress. Before, I wouldn’t even admit that I would live it all over,” the actor said, starting to choke up. “I thought one life was satisfying enough.” “My God,” the host said, cupping his hand to his mouth. “The first breakthrough was when I said I would live it over, but only in my dreams. Nocturnal recurrence.” “You’re like the character in that one movie of yours. What’s it called? You know, the one where you eat yourself.” “The Silence of Sam.” “That’s it. Can you do the scene?” The actor lifts up his foot to stick it in his mouth. I reach over from my seat and help him to fit it into his bulging cheeks. The audience goes wild.

I slid them under his hoodie as his teeth nipped at my bottom lip, and then they were on his face, feeling the rigid solidity of his jawline while he kissed me like it was his job and he wanted a raise.

If anyone names me after a gemstone, I’m going to find out how well my new teeth work on them. I saw that movie too. I think I’ll stick with Dragon. At least it sounds badass and it’s self-explanatory.” - Jill Hammond

All day, I worried—what if she resorts to the bathrobe sweater at the last minute? What if she gets something in her teeth and doesn’t notice? What if this guy doesn’t see how totally adorable she is? What if he hurts her feelings? Saturday night, I went to a movie with a friend, but the whole night I was checking my phone to see if my mother had called or texted. When she finally called at midnight, I picked up the phone on the first ring. “How was it?” “Aw, it didn’t go so well.” My heart sank. I was already hatching revenge plots against the cad when she continued, “He was nice, but I’m not sure I’m interested.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Not everyone is lucky enough to hang out with my fashionable, smooth, totally cool mom. Just me.

When my little group get together, if we disagree about something, we can sort it out. Example: Mohona Hossain hates Divargiit Singh. Hates all his movies. Hates him with a passion. She likes that other fool with the eyelashes like a lady! But we compromise. Never once have I burned a single video of hers.

I could just as easily have taken the train.” He shut his eyes, just long enough for a movie of a Tess-induced train riot to screen on the backs of his eyelids. Fists flying, teeth broken, friendships destroyed as men vied to get closer to her lush body barely covered in that incendiary French maid outfit. And now he was turning hard again.

Legs are my favorite part. I never snap them off with a single bite. I nibble on them slowly as I work my way up. I crunch bony ankles, gnaw on slender calves. Knees are a delicacy; canine teeth are ideal for chipping cartilage. Thighs - oh sweet, sweet thighs - must be savored, eaten like a sacred drumstick. Thick and long and often hairy, a torso is best swallowed whole. The neck is delicious, but fragile: one bite and all I have left is a tiny head resting on my fingertips. Animal crackers. They are a great snack...

It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool. The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens, no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators. It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It so happens I am sick of being a man. Still it would be marvelous to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily, or kill a nun with a blow on the ear. It would be great to go through the streets with a green knife letting out yells until I died of the cold. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, going on down, into the moist guts of the earth, taking in and thinking, eating every day. I don't want so much misery. I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb, alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, half frozen, dying of grief. That's why Monday, when it sees me coming with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline, and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel, and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night. And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses, into hospitals where the bones fly out the window, into shoeshops that smell like vinegar, and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin. There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines hanging over the doors of houses that I hate, and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror, there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords. I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything, I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops, and courtyards with washing hanging from the line: underwear, towels and shirts from which slow dirty tears are falling

Gimme a minute,” I said, and felt myself baring my teeth in a grin. “How does the leg feel?” “I’ve had worse,” Michael said, his voice strained. He shifted his weight, testing the leg, and made a hissing sound—but it supported his weight. “Only a flesh wound.” “Yeah,” I said. “’Tis but a scratch. Come on, ya pansy.” He blinked and looked at me. “Pansy?” “Oh,” I said. “You weren’t quoting the movie. Sorry.” “Movie?” “Holy Grail?” “Nicodemus still has it.” I sighed. “Never mind.

He’s brought a sleeping bag, one of those big green bulky L.L. Bean ones. I look at it questioningly. Following my gaze, he turns red. “I told my parents I was going to help you study, then we might watch a movie, and if it got late enough, I’d crash on your living room floor.” “And they said?” “Mom said, ‘Have a nice time, dear.’ Dad just looked at me.” “Embarrassing much?” “Worth it.” He walks slowly over, his eyes locked on mine, then puts his hands around my waist. “Um. So . . . are we going to study?” My tone’s deliberately casual. Jase slides his thumbs behind my ears, rubbing the hollow at their base. He’s only inches from my face, still looking into my eyes. “You bet. I’m studying you.” He scans over me, slowly, then returns to my eyes. “You have little flecks of gold in the middle of the blue.” He bends forward and touches his lips to one eyelid, then the other, then moves back. “And your eyelashes aren’t blond at all, they’re brown. And . . .” He steps back a little, smiling slowly at me. “You’re already blushing—here”—his lips touch the pulse at the hollow of my throat—“and probably here . . .” The thumb that brushes against my breast feels warm even through my T-shirt. In the movies, clothes just melt away when the couple is ready to make love. They’re all golden and backlit with the soundtrack soaring. In real life, it just isn’t like that. Jase has to take off his shirt and fumbles with his belt buckle and I hop around the room pulling off my socks, wondering just how unsexy that is. People in movies don’t even have socks. When Jase pulls off his jeans, change he has in his pocket slips out and clatters and rolls across the floor. “Sorry!” he says, and we both freeze, even though no one’s home to hear the sound. In movies, no one ever gets self-conscious at this point, thinking they should have brushed their teeth. In movies, it’s all beautifully choreographed, set to an increasingly dramatic soundtrack. In movies, when the boy pulls the girl to him when they are both finally undressed, they never bump their teeth together and get embarrassed and have to laugh and try again. But here’s the truth: In movies, it’s never half so lovely as it is here and now with Jase.

It was getting late, but sleep was the furthest thing from my racing mind. Apparently that was not the case for Mr. Sugar Buns. He lay back, closed his eyes, and threw an arm over his forehead, his favorite sleeping position. I could hardly have that. So, I crawled on top of him and started chest compressions. It seemed like the right thing to do. "What are you doing?" he asked without removing his arm. "Giving you CPR." I pressed into his chest, trying not to lose count. Wearing a red-and-black football jersey and boxers that read, DRIVERS WANTED. SEE INSIDE FOR DETAILS, I'd straddled him and now worked furiously to save his life, my focus like that of a seasoned trauma nurse. Or a seasoned pot roast. It was hard to say. "I'm not sure I'm in the market," he said, his voice smooth and filled with a humor I found appalling. He clearly didn't appreciate my dedication. "Damn it, man! I'm trying to save your life! Don't interrupt." A sensuous grin slid across his face. He tucked his arms behind his head while I worked. I finished my count, leaned down, put my lips on his, and blew. He laughed softly, the sound rumbling from his chest, deep and sexy, as he took my breath into his lungs. That part down, I went back to counting chest compressions. "Don't you die on me!" And praying. After another round, he asked, "Am I going to make it?" "It's touch-and-go. I'm going to have to bring out the defibrillator." "We have a defibrillator?" he asked, quirking a brow, clearly impressed. I reached for my phone. "I have an app. Hold on." As I punched buttons, I realized a major flaw in my plan. I needed a second phone. I could hardly shock him with only one paddle. I reached over and grabbed his phone as well. Started punching buttons. Rolled my eyes. "You don't have the app," I said from between clenched teeth. "I had no idea smartphones were so versatile." "I'll just have to download it. It'll just take a sec." "Do I have that long?" Humor sparkled in his eyes as he waited for me to find the app. I'd forgotten the name of it, so I had to go back to my phone, then back to his, then do a search, then download, then install it, all while my patient lay dying. Did no one understand that seconds counted? "Got it!" I said at last. I pressed one phone to his chest and one to the side of his rib cage like they did in the movies, and yelled, "Clear!" Granted, I didn't get off him or anything as the electrical charge riddled his body, slammed his heart into action, and probably scorched his skin. Or that was my hope, anyway. He handled it well. One corner of his mouth twitched, but that was about it. He was such a trouper. After two more jolts of electricity--it had to be done--I leaned forward and pressed my fingertips to his throat. "Well?" he asked after a tense moment. I released a ragged sigh of relief,and my shoulders fell forward in exhaustion. "You're going to be okay, Mr. Farrow." Without warning, my patient pulled me into his arms and rolled me over, pinning me to the bed with his considerable weight and burying his face in my hair. It was a miracle!

As one refugee, Amila, from Gradačac, commented 20 years later: “The most important part of being a refugee is being a good loser; it’s the only way to survive this. You learn to lose your nationality, your home to strangers with bigger guns, your father to mental illness, one aunt to genocide, and another to nationalism and ignorance. You learn to lose your kids, friends, dreams, neighbours, loves, diplomas, careers, photo albums, home movies, schools, museums, histories, landmarks, limbs, teeth, eyesight, sense of safety, sanity, and your sense of belonging in the world”.

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

Follow your doctor’s orders. For me that means antidepressants and behavioral therapy. Exercise thirty minutes a day, six days a week. Get sunlight, or if you can’t, use light therapy. Do not overuse your light therapy lamp even though you want to. Treat yourself like you would your favorite pet. Plenty of fresh water, lots of rest, snuggles as needed, allow yourself naps. Avoid negativity. That means the news, people, movies. It will all be there when you’re healthy again. The world will get on without your seeing it. Forgive yourself. For being broken. For being you. For thinking those are things that you need forgiveness for. Those terrible things you tell yourself? Can you imagine if the person you love most were telling themselves those things? You’d think they were crazy. And wrong. They think the same about you. Those negative things you are thinking are not rational. Remember that depression lies and that your brain is not always trustworthy. Give yourself permission to recover. I’m lucky that I can work odd hours and take mental health days but I still feel shitty for taking them. Realize that sometimes these slow days are necessary and healthy and utterly responsible. Watch Doctor Who. Love on an animal. Go adopt a rescue, or if you can’t, go to the shelter and just snuggle a kitten. Then realize that that same little kitten that you’re cradling isn’t going to accomplish shit but is still wonderful and lovely and so important. You are that kitten. Get up. Go brush your teeth. Go take a hot shower. If you do nothing else today just change into a new pair of pajamas. It helps. Remember that you are not alone. There are crisis lines filled with people who want to help. There are people who love you more than you know. There are people who can’t wait to meet you because you will teach them how unalone they are. You are so worthy of happiness and it will come.

I step out of Bourbon Bandits onto the sidewalk of Geary Street and take my place among the zombies and psychopaths. How do I tell the difference? The psychopaths wear suits. The zombies have skin peeling off their faces and reek of rotting teeth and were likely the extras in a movie we were all in but forgot about.

He loved the energy of the place, though he barely ever visited without getting shoved around or having his pockets picked. The slam of the city, the assault of neon and electric light, the roiling mass of people, made up of mixed elements: sailors, tourists, cops, hookers, hustlers and dealers. He wandered through the crowds, fascinated; a skinny boy with big teeth and glasses, his ribs sticking out. At the same time he was drawn to quieter, more inward pursuits. He liked to draw, liked going to the movies on his own or wandering round the dioramas in the Natural History Museum; the dusty smell, the long unpopulated corridors.

As time passed there was no more buying food, no money, no supplies. On some days, we wouldn’t even have a crumb to eat. There’s a vivid scene in Nanni Loy’s The Four Days of Naples, a movie made after the war about the uprising of the Neapolitans against the occupying Germans, in which one of the young characters sinks his teeth into a loaf of bread so voraciously, so desperately, I can still identify with him. In those four famous days in late September, when Naples rose up against the Germans—even before the Allies arrived, it was the climax of a terrible period of deprivation and marked the beginning of the end of the war in Italy.

The couple had only lived a short while in that village, and they were poor as rats. Leonarda's husband bought damaged cigarettes, personally extracted his own teeth, ate meat and polenta twice a week, drank mate from an earthenware mug, never took his wife to the movies, and when she was ill he took her to a veterinarian.

Alfred Hitchcock said movies are “life with the dull bits cut out.”5 Car chases and first kisses, interesting plot lines and good conversations. We don’t want to watch our lead character going on a walk, stuck in traffic, or brushing his teeth—at least not for long, and not without a good soundtrack. We tend to want a Christian life with the dull bits cut out. Yet God made us to spend our days in rest, work, and play, taking care of our bodies, our families, our neighborhoods, our homes. What if all these boring parts matter to God? What if days passed in ways that feel small and insignificant to us are weighty with meaning and part of the abundant life that God has for us?

I smile at my friends, but Mer and Rashmi and Josh are distracted, arguing about something that happened over dinner. St. Clair sees me and smiles back. "Good?" I nod.He looks pleased and ducks into the row after me. I always sit four rows up from the center, and we have perfectseats tonight.The chairs are classic red. The movie begins,and the title screen flashes up. "Ugh,we have to sit through the credits?" Rashmi asks. They roll first,like in all old films. I read them happily. I love credits. I love everything about movies. The theater is dark except for the flicker of blacks and whites and grays on-screen. Clark Gable pretends to sleep and places his hand in the center of an empty bus seat. After a moment of irritation,Claudette Colbert gingerly plucks it aside and sits down. Gable smiles to himself,and St. Clair laughs. It's odd,but I keep finding myself distracted. By the white of his teeth through the darkness.By a wavy bit of his hair that sticks straight out to the side. By the soft aroma of his laundry detergent. He nudges me to silently offer the armrest,but I decline and he takes it.His arm is close to mine,slightly elevated. I glance at his hands.Mine are tiny compared to his large,knuckly boy hands. And,suddenly,I want to touch him. Not a push,or a shove,or even a friendly hug. I want to feel the creases in his skin,connect his freckles with invisible lines,brush my fingers across the inside of his wrist. He shifts. I have the strangest feeling that he's as aware of me as I am of him. I can't concentrate. The characters on the screen are squabbling, but for the life of me, I don't know what about. How long have I not been paying attention? St. Clair coughs and shifts again. His leg brushes against mine.It stays there. I'm paralyzed. I should move it; it feels too unnatural.How can he not notice his leg is touching my leg? From the corner of my eye,I see the profile of his chin and nose,and-oh,dear God-the curve of his lips. There.He glanced at me. I know he did. I bore my eyes into the screen, trying my best to prove that I am Really Interested in this movie.St. Clair stiffens but doesn't move his leg.Is he holding his breath? I think he is.I'm holding mine. I exhale and cringe-it's so loud and unnatural. Again.Another glance. This time I turn, automatically,just as he's turning away. It's a dance,and now there's a feeling in the air like one of us should say something.Focus,Anna. Focus. "Do you like it?" I whisper. He pauses. "The film?" I'm thankful the shadows hide my blush. "I like it very much," he says. I risk a glance,and St. Clair stares back. Deeply.He has not looked at me like this before.I turn away first, then feel him turn a few beats later. I know he is smiling,and my heart races.

But middle-class in this country was a state of mind, as one of Kaiz’s unbearable friends had once declared. Not the filthy-rich of masala movies, not the dirt-poor of arthouse films, but everything in between. For some it was shorthand for middle-access, a separation from the corridors of power. For others it was middle-culture, a separation from the world of ideas.

Consider that in most post-apocalyptic movies, you see hordes of bad guys wearing leather, riding motorcycles, armed to the teeth, and living in bad-guy strongholds. I always wonder where their underlying support system is and ask about the thousands of people tanning their clothing, processing the fuel for their vehicles, and working in the fields to feed them. Whenever

Why do you think movies and fiction authors invent vampires, lottery winners, and soulmates? I'll tell you why: because watching someone brush their teeth, shop for sandwich meat, and change the toilet paper roll is as mind-numbing for the observer as it is for the observed. Problem is, we live the toilet paper life, not the vampire life.' ....'But we expect the vampires.

Bianca?” Startled, I focused on Toby again. “Hmm?” “Are you all right?” he asked. My fingers had been toying with the little B charm around my neck without my realizing it. Immediately I dropped my hand to my side. “I’m fine.” “Casey warned me that you’re probably lying when you say that,” he said. I gritted my teeth and searched the dance floor for my so-called friend. She was being added to my hit list. “And I think she’s right,” Toby sighed. “What?” “Bianca, I can see what’s going on.” He glanced over his shoulder at Wesley before turning back to me with a little nod. “He’s been staring at you since he got here.” “Has he?” “I can see him in the mirrors over there. And you’ve been staring back,” Toby said. “It’s not just tonight either. I’ve seen the way he looks at you during school. In the hallways. He likes you, doesn’t he?” “I… I don’t know. I guess.” Oh God, this was uncomfortable. I just kept spinning my straw between my fingers and watching the little waves that appeared on the surface of my drink. I couldn’t meet Toby’s gaze. “I don’t have to guess,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious. And the way you look at him makes me think you’re in love with him, too.” “No!” I cried, releasing my straw and glaring up at Toby. “No, no, no. I am not in love with him, okay?” Toby gave me a small smile and said, “But you do have feelings for him.” I couldn’t see any sign of pain in his eyes, just a touch of amusement. That made it a lot easier to give him an answer. “Um,… yeah.” “Then go to him.” I rolled my eyes without meaning to. It was just so automatic. “Jesus, Toby,” I said, “that sounds like a line out of a bad movie.” Toby shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m serious, Bianca. If you feel that way about him, you should go over there.

By eleven-thirty, Sadie was in her pajamas, teeth brushed and flossed, ready to go to bed. She wondered if this was what other twenty-three-year-olds' Friday nights were like. When she was forty, would she lament that she hadn't had sex with more people and partied more? But then, she didn't enjoy many people, and she had never gone to a party that she wasn't eager to leave. She hated being drunk, though she did enjoy smoking a joint every now and then. She liked playing games, seeing a foreign movie, a good meal. She liked going to bed early and waking up early. She liked working.

It’s an affront, all of that. Weak knees, arthritic knuckles, varicose veins, infirmities, indignities – they aren’t ours, we never wanted or claimed them. Inside our heads we carry ourselves perfected – ourselves at the best age, and in the best light as well: never caught awkwardly, one leg out of a car, one still in, or picking our teeth, or slouching, or scratching our noses or bums. If naked, seen gracefully reclining through a gauzy mist, which is where movie stars come in: they assume such poses for us. They are our younger selves as they recede from us, glow, turn mythical.

Leaving Forever My son can look me level in the eyes now, and does, hard, when I tell him he cannot watch chainsaw murders at the midnight movie, that he must bend his mind to Biology, under this roof, in the clear light of a Tensor lamp. Outside, his friends throb with horsepower under the moon. He stands close, milk sour on his breath, gauging the heat of my conviction, eye-whites pink from his new contacts. He can see me better than before. And I can see myself in those insolent eyes, mostly head in the pupil's curve, closed in by the contours of his unwrinkled flesh. At the window he waves a thin arm and his buddies squall away in a glare of tail lights. I reach out my arm to his shoulder, but he shrugs free and shows me my father's narrow eyes, the trembling hand at my throat, the hard wall at the back of my skull, the raised fist framed in the bedroom window I had climbed through at three A.M. "If you hit me I'll leave forever," I said. But everything was fine in a few days, fine. "I would have come back," I said, "false teeth and all." Now, twice a year after the long drive, in the yellow light of the front porch, I breathe in my father's whiskey, ask for a shot, and see myself distorted in his thick glasses, the two of us grinning, as he holds me with both hands at arm's length.

I was always bad at reading scripts. Back then, I’d be offered millions of dollars to do movies and barely crack the first few pages. I’m embarrassed to admit that now, given that these days I’m writing scripts myself and it’s like pulling teeth to get actors to respond. Maybe they feel how I used to feel: that in a life of fun and fame and money, reading a script, no matter the size of the number attached, feels all too much like school. The universe will teach you, though. All those years I was too this, too that, to read a script, but last year I wrote a screenplay for myself and was trying get it made until I realized that I was too old to play the part. Most fifty-three-year-olds have worked their shit out already, so I needed to hire a thirty-year-old. The one I chose took weeks and weeks to respond, and I couldn’t believe how rude his behavior was.

Katarina wasn’t afraid of Baden. Not anymore. He took a step to the side, intending to move around her. Oh, no. She flattened her hands on his shoulders, keeping him in place. “I want to know what’s wrong with you.” She said. “Tell me.” He snapped his teeth at her in a show of dominance. “You think you want to know my problem. You’re wrong.” Her tone dry, she said, “I’m so glad you know my mind better than I do.” “Very well. I need sex.” He threw the words at her as if they were weapons. “Badly.” Whoa. Blindside! Heart pounding, she jerked her hands away from him. “Sex...from me?” “Yesss.” A hiss. “Only from you.” Only. Amazing how one little word could send pleasure soaring through her, warming her. “You told me never to touch you.” Which she’d just done, she realized. My bad. “I’ve changed my mind.” His gaze dropped, lingered on her lips. Burning her... “But you and I...we’re a different species.” As if that mattered to her body. Gimme!
 He took a step closer, invading her personal space. “We’ll fit, I promise you.”
 Tristo hrmenych! The raspy quality of his voice, all smoke and gravel...she shivered with longing. Must resist his allure. But...but...why? Before she’d committed to Peter, she’d dated around, had made out in movie theaters, cars and on couches. She’d liked kissing and touching and “riding the belt buckle,” as her friends had called it. Then, after committing to Peter, she’d gifted him with her virginity. At first, he hadn’t known what to do with her—he’d been just as inexperienced—and she’d left each encounter disappointed. When finally she’d gathered the courage to tell him what she wanted, he’d satisfied her well. She missed sex. But connection...intimacy...she thought she missed those more. The dogs barked, jolting her from her thoughts. They’d cleaned their food bowls, and now wanted to play. She clasped Baden’s hand to lead him out of the kennel. He jerked away, severing contact. One action. Tons of hurt. “I’m allowed to touch you and you want to have sex with me, but you’re still disgusted by me.” She stomped outside the kennel, done with him. “Well, I’m leaving. Good riddance! Your do-what-I-say-or-else attitude was annoying, anyway.” He darted in front of her, stopping her. Breath caught in her throat as sunlight streamed over him, paying his chiseled features absolute tribute, making his bronzed skin glimmer. So beautiful. Too beautiful. “I’m not disgusted by you. You need me. I’ve come to accept it,” he admitted, looking away from her. “But being skin-to-skin with another is painful for me. We’ll have to proceed carefully. And you’ll get over your annoyance.” Another order! She would show him the error of his ways.

Why don't you ask me up for a drink?" "A drink? There's not much of a variety, but you're welcome." "It's nice to be asked occasionally." Before he could tuck his hand safely in his pocket, she took it, threaded their fingers together. "You have free time now and again yourself," she said easily. "I wonder if you've heard of the concept of dates. Dinner, movies, drives?" "I've some experience with them," He glanced at his pickup as they turned his quarters. "It you've a yen for a drive, you can climb up into the lorry, but I'd need to shovel it out first." She huffed out a breath. "That, Donnelly, wasn't the most romantic of invitations." "Secondhand lorries aren't particularly romantic, and I've forgotten where I parked my glass coach." "If that's another princess crack-" She broke off,set her teeth. Patience, she reminded herself. She wasn't going to spoil things with an argument. "Never mind.We'll forget the drive." She opened the door herself. "And move straight to dinner.

I’m going to tell you something, there’s country poor, and there’s city poor. As much of my life as I’d spent in front of a TV thinking Oh, man, city’s where the money trees grow, I was seeing more to the picture now. I mean yes, that is where they all grow, but plenty of people are sitting in that shade with nothing falling on them. Chartrain was always discussing “hustle,” and it took me awhile to understand he grew up hungry for money like it was food. Because for him, they’re one and the same. Not to run the man down, but he wouldn’t know a cow from a steer, or which of them gave milk. No desperate men Chartrain ever knew went out and shot venison if they were hungry. They shot liquor store cashiers. Living in the big woods made of steel and cement, without cash, is a hungrier life than I knew how to think about. I made my peace with the place, but never went a day without feeling around for things that weren’t there, the way your tongue pushes into the holes where you’ve lost teeth. I don’t just mean cows, or apple trees, it runs deeper. Weather, for instance. Air, the way it smells from having live things breathing into it, grass and trees and I don’t know what, creatures of the soil. Sounds, I missed most of all. There was noise, but nothing behind it. I couldn’t get used to the blankness where there should have been bird gossip morning and evening, crickets at night, the buzz saw of cicadas in August. A rooster always sounding off somewhere, even dead in the middle of Jonesville. It’s like the movie background music. Notice it or don’t, but if the volume goes out, the movie has no heart. I’d oftentimes have to stop and ask myself what season it was. I never realized what was holding me to my place on the planet of earth: that soundtrack. That, and leaf colors and what’s blooming in the roadside ditches this week, wild sweet peas or purple ironweed or goldenrod. And stars. A sky as dark as sleep, not this hazy pinkish business, I’m saying blind man’s black. For a lot of us, that’s medicine. Required for the daily reboot.

Also enraged at myself. Or not at myself - at this bad turn my body has done me. After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken. It's an affront, all of that. Weak knees, arthritic knuckles, varicose veins, infirmities, indignities - they aren't ours, we never wanted or claimed them. Inside our heads we carry ourselves perfected - ourselves at the best age, and in the best light as well: never caught awkwardly, one leg out of a car, one still in, or picking our teeth, or slouching, or scratching our noses or bums. If naked, seen gracefully reclining through a gauzy mist, which is where movie stars come in: they assume such poses for us. They are our younger selves as they recede from us, glow, turn mythical.

It can’t be over, not when I finally found my courage. I can’t let it be. My heart is pounding like a million trillion beats a minute as I scoot closer to him. I bend my head down and press my lips against his, and I feel his jolt of surprise. And then he’s kissing me back, open-mouthed, soft-lipped kissing-me-back, and at first I’m nervous, but then he puts his hand on the back of my head, and he strokes my hair in a reassuring way, and I’m not so nervous anymore. It’s a good thing I’m sitting down on this ledge, because I am weak in the knees. He pulls me into the water so I’m sitting in the hot tub too, and my nightgown is soaked now but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. I never knew kissing could be this good. My arms are at my sides so the jets won’t make my skirt fly up. Peter’s holding my face in his hands, kissing me. “Are you okay?” he whispers. His voice is different: it’s ragged and urgent and vulnerable somehow. He doesn’t sound like the Peter I know; he is not smooth or bored or amused. The way he’s looking at me right now, I know he would do anything I asked, and that’s a strange and powerful feeling. I wind my arms around his neck. I like the smell of chlorine on his skin. He smells like pool, and summer, and vacations. It’s not like in the movies. It’s better, because it’s real. “Touch my hair again,” I tell him, and the corners of his mouth turn up. I lean into him and kiss him. He starts to run his fingers through my hair, and it feels so nice I can’t think straight. It’s better than getting my hair washed at the salon. I move my hands down his back and along his spine, and he shivers and pulls me closer. A boy’s back feels so different than a girl’s back--more muscular, more solid somehow. In between kisses he says, “It’s past curfew. We should go back inside.” “I don’t want to,” I say. All I want is to stay and be here, with Peter, in this moment. “Me either, but I don’t want you to get in trouble,” Peter says. He looks worried, which is so sweet. Softly, I touch his cheek with the back of my hand. It’s smooth. I could look at his fce for hours, it’s so beautiful. Then I stand up, and immediately I’m shivering. I start wringing the water out of my nightgown, and Peter jumps out of the hot tub and gets his towel, which he wraps around my shoulders. The he gives me his hand and I step out, teeth chattering. He starts drying me off with the towel, my arms and legs. I sit down to put on my socks and boots. He puts my coat on me last. He zips me right in. Then we run back inside the lodge. Before he goes to the boys’ side and I go to the girls’ side, I kiss him one more time and I feel like I’m flying.

Galveston?” he asked in that amazing voice, still surprising me by keeping our conversation going. “Yeah. Staying at a beach house and everything. Totally slumming it and having a miserable time, you know?” I gave him a real smile that time. Rip just raised his brows. “I promised her I would go visit, and she promised she would come up too... What’s that face for?” I surprised myself by laughing. “I don’t believe it either. I’ll get lucky if she comes once. I’m not that delusional.” I didn’t imagine the way his cheek twitched again, just a little, just enough to keep the smile on my face. “I’m stuck making my own lunches from now on. I have nobody to watch scary movies with who’s more dramatic than I am screaming at the scary parts. And my house is empty,” I told him, going on a roll. “Your lunches?” was what he picked up on. I wasn’t sure how much he’d had to drink that he was asking me so many questions, but I wasn’t going to complain. “I can’t cook to save my life, boss. I thought everyone knew. Baking is the only thing I can handle.” “You serious?” he asked in a surprised tone. I nodded. “For real?” “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I can’t even make rice in an Instant Pot. It’s either way too dry or it’s mush.” Oh. “An Instant Pot is—” “I know what it is,” he cut me off. It was my turn to make a face, but mine was an impressed one. He knew what an Instant Pot was but not a rom-com. Okay. “Sorry.” He didn’t react to me trying to tease him, instead he asked, “You can’t even make rice in that?” “Nope.” “You know there’s instructions online.” Was he messing with me now? I couldn’t help but watch him a little. How much had he drunk already? “Yeah, I know.” “And you still screw it up?” I blinked, soaking up Chatty Cathy over here like a plant that hadn’t seen the sun in too long. “I wouldn’t say I screw it up. It’s more like… you either need to chew a little more or a little less.” It was his turn to blink. “It’s a surprise. I like to keep people on their toes.” If I hadn’t been guessing that he’d had a couple drinks before, what he did next would have confirmed it. His left cheek twitched. Then his right one did too, and in the single blink of an eye, Lucas Ripley was smiling at me. Straight white teeth. That not-thin but not-full mouth dark pink and pulled up at the edges. He even had a dimple. Rip had a freaking dimple. And I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. I couldn’t help but think it was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen, even though I had zero business thinking anything along those lines. But I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t say a single word to mention it; otherwise, it might never come out again. What I did trust myself to do was gulp down half of my Sprite before saying, “You can make rice, I’m guessing?” If he wanted to talk, we could talk. I was good at talking. “Uh-huh,” he replied, sounding almost cocky about it. All I could get myself to do in response was grin at him, and for another five seconds, his dimple—and his smile—responded to me.

Harvard pointed. “You know, right there is when the stuntman catches the sword out of frame.” “I know.” Aiden did know. Harvard always told him this fact at this precise moment. Aiden had watched this movie without Harvard once—on a date. Seeing the sword fly without the familiar murmur had upset Aiden enough to turn off the movie. Tonight, Harvard was here with him. They were both lying on their stomachs with their legs kicked up and their hands cupped in their chins, as though they were six years old. They weren’t. Aiden tangled their legs together slightly, deliberately. It felt far more dangerous than crossing swords. Aiden couldn’t imagine a match with so much at stake. “During a date when you stay in,” Aiden said, teaching, “you should try to see if the other person is receptive to you getting closer.” Harvard gave Aiden a look out of the corner of his eye, and let their legs stay tangled, resting with light pressure against one another. Love was a delusion, nothing but an electrical impulse in the brain, but there were many impulses running electric under Aiden’s skin right now. The man in black smiled beneath his mask and switched his sword to his right hand. The clash of swords rang over the sound of the sea. Aiden sneaked another look at Harvard, the shine of his dark eyes and white teeth in the silvery glow from the screen. Harvard caught him looking, but he returned Aiden’s look with a look of his own, warmly affectionate and never suspicious at all. Harvard never suspected a thing. Because Aiden was his best friend, and Harvard trusted him. And Harvard could trust him. Aiden would never do anything to hurt Harvard, not anything at all. Aiden moved in still closer, his arm set against Harvard’s, solid muscle under the thin material of his shirtsleeve. He could put his arm around Harvard’s shoulders or slip an arm around his waist or lean in. He was allowed, just for tonight.

We may have to mask your scent.” He looked at her soberly. “Did Olivia tell you anything about scent marking?” “Scent marking?” Sophie wracked her brain, trying to remember. It seemed vaguely familiar though she couldn’t remember exactly what it involved. Still, how bad could it be? “Oh, uh, sure. Scent marking.” She nodded. “Good. Because in the last extremity, if I hear the sniffers around this cabin, I may have to scent mark you—to mask your scent with my own.” “Can you do that? I mean, is your scent that much stronger than mine, especially when they’re focused on me?” Sylvan looked down at his hands. “Normally it isn’t but right now…ever since the trip we took in the transport tube…” Sophie thought of the warm, spicy scent that seemed to go to her head, the way it made her react to him… “It’s your mating scent, isn’t it?” she asked in a low voice, not daring to look at him. “Yes.” He sounded ashamed. “But why…” She risked a sidelong glance at him. “Why is it coming out now? I, uh, thought it only happened during the claiming period. But you’re not, um, claiming me or anything. I mean, we’re not… you know.” “I know.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand what’s going on either. We haven’t even been dream sharing. Well, that is, I mean…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve had a few dreams of you. But nothing out of the ordinary.” He glanced at her. “Have you…had any strange dreams?” “No.” Sophie shook her head and a look of mingled disappointment and relief passed over his stern features. “I have been, uh, having problems with my art, though,” she admitted in a low voice. “Problems with your art?” He frowned. “What do you mean?” “I paint,” Sophie explained. “You know—with a paintbrush and easel?” She made a painting motion in the air and his eyes widened. “That was what I dreamed. That you were painting a picture of…of me.” Sophie nearly choked. “But I have been! You’re all I’ve been able to paint lately. Even when I try not to, you always sneak in there. It’s so annoying.” Then she realized what she’d said. “Uh, I mean—” “It doesn’t matter.” Sylvan cut her off, shaking his head. “So we have been dream sharing, in a way.” Sophie felt herself go cold all over. “Does…does that mean you’re going to try to…to claim me? The way Baird claimed Liv?” Oh my God, if he does, if he claims me, then he’ll want to bite me! That’s the way his people do it. She had horror-movie visions of being held down under his muscular bulk, held down and pierced multiple times and in multiple ways. God, his teeth in my throat at the same time he’s inside me, filling me, holding me down and biting and thrusting. He’s so big, so strong—I’d never be able to get away. The horror she felt must have showed on her face, because Sylvan’s voice was rough when he spoke. “Don’t worry, Sophia. Even if I wanted to claim you, I couldn’t.” “Oh right.” She felt a small measure of relief. “Your vow.” “My vow,” he agreed. “Sylvan,

Sean was watching me, though. And Sean wiped the bryozoa residue from his hand across my stomach. This was the third time a boy had ever touched my bare tummy, and I’d had enough. Through gritted teeth, like any extra movement might spread the bryozoa further across my skin, I told him, “I like you less than I did.” I bailed over the side of the boat-the side opposite where the bryozoa returned to its native habitat. Deep in the warm water, I scrubbed at my tummy with both hands. A combination of bryozoa waste and Sean germs: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Leaning toward worst, because now I had slime on my hands. Or maybe this was psychosomatic. Holding my hands open in front of me in the water, I didn’t see any slime. I rubbed my hands together anyway. Something dove into the water beside me in a rush of bubbles. I came up for air. Sean surfaced, too, tossing sparkling drops of water from his hair. “You still like me a lot, though, right?” “No prob. Green is the new black.” Giving up on getting clean, I swam a few strokes back toward the platform to get out again. What I needed was a shower with chlorinated water and disinfectant soap. I might need to bubble out my belly button with hydrogen peroxide. “What if I made it up to you?” He splashed close behind me. “What if I helped you get clean? We don’t want you dirty.” He moved both hands around me under the water, up and down across my tummy. It was the fourth time a boy had touched my tummy! And it was very awkward. He bobbed so close behind me that I had a hard time treading water without kicking him. I needed to choose between flirting and breathing. Cameron and my brother leaned over the side of the boat and gaped at us, which didn’t help matters. I’d been afraid of this. Flirting with Sean was no fun if the other boys acted like we were lepers. Well, okay, it was fun, but not as fun as it was supposed to be. Obviously I would need to give McGullicuddy the little dolphin talk. I wasn’t sure I could do this with Cameron-Cameron and I didn’t have heart-to-heart convos-but I might need to make an exception, if he continued to watch us like we were a dirty movie on Pay-Per-View (which I’d also seen a lot of. Life with boys). BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE- Sean and I started and turned toward the boat. Still behind the steering wheel, Adam had his chin in his hand and his elbow on the horn. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Damn it! I turned around to face Sean and gave him a wry smile, but he’d already taken his hands away from my tummy. The horn really ruined the mood. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Sean hauled himself up onto the platform. I followed close behind him, and (glee!) he put out a hand to help me. Cameron and my brother yelled at Adam. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. “Oh!” Adam said as if he’d had no idea he’d been laying on the horn. He looked at his elbow like it belonged to someone else. I was in the boat with Sean now, and he was still holding my hand. Or, maybe I was still clinging to his hand, but this is a question of semantics. In any case, I pulled him by the hand past the other boys to the bow. We didn’t have privacy. There was no privacy on a wakeboarding boat. At least we had the boat’s windshield between us and the others. As I turned to sit down on the bench, I stuck out my tongue at Adam behind the windshield. He crossed his eyes at me.

A student once asked me if I would let a two-year-old watch The Passion of the Christ (2004). I answered in the negative; but I added that I also would not feed a two-month-old infant a steak. Because she doesn’t have any teeth, a two-month-old would probably choke on the steak. This is not because steak is deadly, but simply because a two-month-old is not developmentally ready to ingest it. It is often the same with movies.

I didn’t want to go, but his arms were underneath me, easing me toward the edge of the gurney and a waiting wheelchair padded with pillows. I was afraid any resistance would result in another game of hospital gown peekaboo. He settled me so gently in the soft wheelchair that my hip and my back hardly hurt. Pushing me past the curtain and into the bustling emergency room, he leaned close, over me, to say, “I fixed it. They’re going to lose the records of your visit, so you’ll never get billed. But you’re my girlfriend.” “What do you mean, I’m your girlfriend?” What delicious blackmail was this? And was it worth the price? Perhaps I could stand it. ‘I had to make them think I have a vested interest in you,” he whispered. “They never would have agreed to lose your records if I told them you were my friend at twelve years old but not so much at eighteen and I had pretty much walked in and stolen the birthright to your family farm. See? Shhh. Hey, Brody.” He slapped hands with another man in scrubs wheeling an empty gurney in the opposite direction. The man eyed me, waggled his eyebrows at Hunter, and kept going. “Couldn’t you have said we’re friends and left it at that?” I needed to keep up the façade that I did not like the idea at all. At the same time, I was a little afraid Hunter would call the charade off. “I have a lot of friends,” he explained, wheeling me into a waiting room marked X-RAY. he rounded the wheelchair and knelt in front of me. Behind him, a door stood ajar. A contraption I assumed to be an X-ray machine was visible through the crack. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, then turned back to me. “Sorry about this,” he murmured as he slid both hands into my hair and kissed me. All I could do at first was feel. His lips were on mine. His hands held me steady, so I couldn’t have shrugged away if I’d tried, but I would not try. Bright tingles spread from my lips across my face and down my neck to my chest. I longed to pull him closer for more. I reminded myself that we were faking this for a reason. I didn’t want to make the kiss deeper than necessary in case it turned him off. Hunter deepened it. His tongue pressed past my teeth and swept inside my mouth. One of his hands released my hair and caressed my shoulder, traveling down. The farther his hand went, the higher I felt. My hip hardly hurt and my back pain was gone. I wondered how low his hand would go. I never found out. A shadow stood in the doorway and cleared its throat. I stopped kissing Hunter back and braced for him to jump away. He did back off, but very slowly. He sat back on his haunches and glared at the X-ray tech as if she had a lot of nerve. His cheeks were bright red. “So, Hunter,” she said mischievously. “This is your girlfriend.” “Hullo.” I gave her a small wave. “And you got hit by a taxi while you were crossing the street to visit Hunter? That is so romantic! Have you seen Sleepless in Seattle?” “Not romantic,” I said flatly. “I hate that movie. They don’t meet until the last scene. They don’t kiss at all.” Too late I realized I sounded like I was begging Hunter for more. “But in that movie,” the tech said, “they talk about An Affair to Remember. Have you seen that? Deborah Kerr is crossing the street to meet Cary Grant and gets hit by a car. Years later he comes back to her and she’s paralyzed from the waist down.” “You call that romantic?” I heard myself yelling. “That is repulsive!” Hunter stood and put a heavy hand on my shoulder as he pushed my wheelchair past the tech and through the doorway to the X-ray machine. “Erin is in a lot of pain,” he murmured to the tech, “and she doesn’t want to think about being paralyzed from the waist down.” After that the tech was a lot nicer, because Hunter had a way with people. Hunter lifted me onto the table and left the room so he wouldn’t be irradiated or see my bony ass.

We weep for characters, and then we go brush our teeth and have to face the fact that the world is warming at such a rapid pace that a terrifying number of amphibians are vanishing every month. And so through plays, through soccer games, through novels, through movies, through video games, through political elections - through story - we rehearse feelings we might eventually need in our own lives. ... Through drama, in the moments of greatest suspense, when the hero is hanging by a support from above, swaying to and fro ... we rehearse anxiety and longing more profoundly than any other emotions. ... And longing is the reach, the extension, the wild desire to attain the next stable platform at the end of the high wire. It's the hope against hope that the water shooting out of the fountain will stay aloft forever. (Anthony Doerr, "The Sword of Damocles: On Suspense, Shower Murders, and Shooting People on the Beach")

We all line up except for this guy in a wheelchair, Devyn. He smiles at me when I line up, introduces himself. He has a movie star smile, just white teeth and charisma, big eyes, dark skin. He’d be perfect looking if he didn’t have such a large nose, but the truth is it looks good on him, natural and powerful. He winks at Issie, who blushes. “You can do it, Is,” he says. She rolls her eyes, twists her lip, and says, “As long as I don’t pass out.” “If you pass out, I’ll put you in my lap and wheel you across the finish line,” he says, and it somehow isn’t sleazy because you can tell by his eyes how much he cares about Issie. I instantly like him. She blushes worse. Her face looks like she’s already sprinted a mile.

Our ongoing Hollywood education included the lesson that moviemaking is not finished once you actually make the movie. After that, you have to promote the movie, because if the audience doesn’t show up, all your hard work is a bit pointless. But before we could sell Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course to audiences, we had to sell it to the theater owners who were going to show it to the public. So the first stop for our promotional efforts was a gathering of movie theater exhibitors called Show West, in Las Vegas. We would team up there with Bruce Willis, who had an interest in producing our movie. Bindi and I had been in Oregon for a few days, visiting family, and we planned to catch up with Steve in Las Vegas. But she and I had an ugly incident at the airport when we arrived. A Vegas lowlife approached us, his hat pulled down, big sunglasses on his face, and displaying some of the worst dentistry I’ve ever seen. He leered at us, obviously drunk or crazy, and tried to kiss me. I backed off rapidly and looked for Steve. I knew I could rely on him to take care of any creep I encountered. Then it dawned on me: The creep was Steve. In order to move around the airport without anyone recognizing him, he put on false teeth and changed his usual clothes. I didn’t recognize my own husband out of his khakis. I burst out laughing. Bindi was wide-eyed. “Look, it’s your daddy.” It took her a while before she was sure. Our Show West presentation featured live wildlife, organized wonderfully by Wes. Bruce Willis spoke. “I sometimes play an action hero myself,” he said, “but you’ll see that Steve is a real-life action hero.” Bindi brought a ball python out on stage. Backstage, she and Bruce hit it off. He has three daughters of his own, and he immediately connected with Bindi. They wound up playing with the lion cubs and the other animals that Wes had organized there.

The Abortionist’s Daughter Declares Her Love Here is the church. These are the doors that open to the sea. My grandmother once knelt here, awed, a special guest to an exorcism.   It is nothing like the movies would have you think, she told me, and I believed her.   They have called me many things between these aisles, she told me, and I believed her.   That is the trouble with our trade, she said. When men aspire to terrible jobs, we offer them hushed respect, the blushing necks of virgins.   Women wearing the same gloves, sorting the same straight-backed pins between the prayers of their teeth, are taught to deserve nothing more than an acreage of sorrow.   Why

Ahem,” he said carefully. “Since we’re all here, um. So anyway.” He nodded at Deborah. “Morgan,” he said, and he looked at me. “And, uh—Morgan.” He frowned, as if I had insulted him by choosing a name for myself that he’d already said, and the beautiful woman snickered in the silence. Captain Matthews actually blushed, which was almost certainly something he hadn’t done since high school, and he cleared his throat one more time. “All right,” he said, with massive authority and a sidelong glance at the woman. He nodded at the man in the impressive suit. “Mr., ah, Eissen here represents, um, BTN. Big Ticket Network.” The man nodded back at Matthews with a very deliberate display of patient contempt. “And, um. They’re here, in town. In Miami,” he added, in case we’d forgotten what town we lived in. “They want to shoot a movie. A, um, TV show, you know.” The man in the sunglasses spoke up for the first time. “A pilot,” he said, without moving his face, parting his lips only enough to reveal a blinding set of perfect teeth. “It’s called a pilot.” The beautiful woman rolled her eyes and looked at me, shaking her head, and I found myself smiling eagerly back at her, without any conscious decision to do so.

I grit my teeth and smile for the camera, already rehearsing rational explanations in my head. 'Oh, that. We were just rehearsing a scene for the movie, Dad. No, we don't actually kiss in the movie, but the director wanted to see what it would look like if we did... Yes, he does play my uncle, but the screenwriter was toying with an incest storyline'... CRAP.

You need to be careful to stay out of Charlie’s line of sight,” Steve said to me. “I want Charlie focusing only on me. If he changes focus and starts attacking you, it’s going to be too difficult for me to control the situation.” Right. Steve got no argument from me. Getting anywhere near those bone-crushing jaws was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t keen on being down on the water with a huge saltwater crocodile trying to get me. I would have to totally rely on Steve to keep me safe. We stepped into the dinghy, which was moored in Charlie’s enclosure, secured front and back with ropes. Charlie came over immediately to investigate. It didn’t take much to encourage him to have a go at Steve. Steve grabbed a top-jaw rope. He worked on roping Charlie while the cameras rolled. Time and time again, Charlie hurled himself straight at Steve, a half ton of reptile flesh exploding up out of the water a few feet away from me. I tried to hang on precariously and keep the boat counterbalanced. I didn’t want Steve to lose his footing and topple in. Charlie was one angry crocodile. He would have loved nothing more than to get his teeth into Steve. As Charlie used his powerful tail to propel himself out of the water, he arched his neck and opened his jaws wide, whipping his head back and forth, snapping and gnashing. Steve carefully threw the top-jaw rope, but he didn’t actually want to snag Charlie. Then he would have had to get the rope off without stressing the croc, and that would have been tricky. The cameras rolled. Charlie lunged. I cowered. Steve continued to deftly toss the rope. Then, all of a sudden, Charlie swung at the rope instead of Steve, and the rope went right over Charlie’s top jaw. A perfect toss, provided that had been what Steve was trying to do. But it wasn’t. We had a roped croc on our hands that we really didn’t want. Steve immediately let the rope go slack. Charlie had it snagged in his teeth. Because of Steve’s quick thinking and prompt maneuvering, the rope came clear. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Steve looked up at the cameras. “I think you’ve got it.” John agreed. “I think we do, mate.” The crew cheered. The shoot lasted several minutes, but in the boat, I wasn’t sure if it had been seconds or hours. Watching Steve work Charlie up close had been amazing--a huge, unpredictable animal with a complicated thought process, able to outwit its prey, an animal that had been on the planet for millions of years, yet Steve knew how to manipulate him and got some fantastic footage. To the applause of the crew, Steve got us both out of the boat. He gave me a big hug. He was happy. This was what he loved best, being able to interact and work with wildlife. Never before had anything like it been filmed in any format, much less on thirty-five-millimeter film for a movie theater. We accomplished the shot with the insurance underwriters none the wiser. Steve wanted to portray crocs as the powerful apex predators that they were, keeping everyone safe while he did it. Never once did he want it to appear as though he were dominating the crocodile, or showing off by being in close proximity to it. He wished for the crocodile to be the star of the show, not himself. I was proud of him that day. The shoot represented Steve Irwin at his best, his true colors, and his desire to make people understand how amazing these animals are, to be witnessed by audiences in movie theaters all over the world. We filmed many more sequences with crocs, and each time Steve performed professionally and perfected the shots. He was definitely in his element. With the live-croc footage behind us, the insurance people came on board, and we were finally able to sign a contract with MGM. We were to start filming in earnest. First stop: the Simpson Desert, with perentie lizards and fierce snakes.

A few months later, Procter & Gamble tried something similar. Its CEO, A. G. Lafley, had begun talking about the need for P&G to get closer to its consumers. After reading about this, Facebook ad salesman Colleran did one of his masterful cold calls to find out if P&G was targeting any of its brands at the college market. It turned out that while P&G’s Crest White Strips teeth-whitening product had never been aimed specifically at college students, company data showed that the strips sold particularly well at Wal-Marts located near campuses. Colleran and P&G marketers came up with a Facebook campaign called Smile State. Much as Chase and Apple had done, P&G created a sponsored group on Facebook for Crest White Strips. It advertised the Smile State group only to users who were students at one of twenty large state universities located near Wal-Marts. Any student who joined got tickets to an upcoming college-oriented Matthew McConaughey movie called We Are Marshall. In addition, the schools that enrolled the most members in the Crest White Strips group got a concert organized by Def Jam Records. Over 20,000 people joined. To have 20,000 people explicitly expressing affinity for Crest White Strips using their real name is the kind of thing that gives marketers goose bumps. It was a huge win for P&G and for Facebook.

dustpan that he emptied into a larger trash can. If I were him, picking up after people who carelessly dropped stuff on the ground, I’d be nothing but angry. They call it littering when you carelessly drop things. They call the careless folks who drop things by a cute name: litterbug. There’s nothing cute about dropping things carelessly. Dropping garbage and having puppies shouldn’t be called the same thing. “Litter.” I had a mind to write to Miss Webster about that. Puppies don’t deserve to be called a litter like they had been dropped carelessly like garbage. And people who litter shouldn’t be given a cute name for what they do. And at least the mother of a litter sticks around and nurses her pups no matter how sharp their teeth are. Merriam Webster was falling down on the job. How could she have gotten this wrong? Vonetta asked me again. Not because she was anxious to meet Cecile. Vonetta asked again so she could have her routine rehearsed in her head—her curtsy, smile, and greeting—leaving Fern and me to stand around like dumb dodos. She was practicing her role as the cute, bouncy pup in the litter and asked yet again, “Delphine, what do we call her?” A large white woman came and stood before us, clapping her hands like we were on display at the Bronx Zoo. “Oh, my. What adorable dolls you are. My, my.” She warbled like an opera singer. Her face was moon full and jelly soft, the cheeks and jaw framed by white whiskers. We said nothing. “And so well behaved.” Vonetta perked up to out-pretty and out-behave us. I did as Big Ma had told me in our many talks on how to act around white people. I said, “Thank you,” but I didn’t add the “ma’am,” for the whole “Thank you, ma’am.” I’d never heard anyone else say it in Brooklyn. Only in old movies on TV. And when we drove down to Alabama. People say “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am” in Alabama all the time. That old word was perfectly fine for Big Ma. It just wasn’t perfectly fine for me.

Donald Ray sliced his hand open with a knife during a demonstration in a drunk woman’s house and the splash of blood kept the Fangs from nodding off. The movie was so low-budget, Mr. Fang wondered if the actor who played Donald Ray had actually cut open his hand for the scene. He felt his estimation of the actor rise considerably. “Here it comes,” Annie whispered, turning to her parents. “This is me.” Donald Ray, his hand wrapped in a makeshift bandage, picked up the hotel phone and made a collect call to his family back in Little Rock. As the phone rang, tinny and soft in the receiver, the film jumped to Donald Ray’s home, the telephone shrilly ringing on the coffee table. As the camera pulled back, a woman leaned over to answer the phone. She listened for a few seconds and then said that she’d accept the charges. “Donald Ray,” she finally said, both angry and relieved to hear from him. “Look real close,” Annie said. Behind Donald Ray’s wife, sitting on the floor and staring dully at the carpet, was Annie. “That’s you,” Buster said. “Watch now,” Annie said. “This is my big moment.” The Fangs watched their daughter on the big screen, her face empty of expression, seemingly unaware of the conversation going on beside her. It was, the Fangs would later admit, a fairly compelling performance. Then, suddenly, so fast that you would miss it if you weren’t looking, Annie looked toward the camera and smiled. The Fangs could not believe it had happened, the moment so jarring and unsettling that it took them a few seconds to realize what they had just seen. Annie had smiled at the camera. Her teeth bared. Fanged. “Annie?” Mr. and Mrs. Fang said at once. In the seat next to them, Annie was smiling, beaming, the scene ended, her character not to return for the rest of the movie. She was, the Fangs now understood, a star. Chapter Five Annie needed to get out of town. Three days after her disastrous interview,

I had read stories, novels, seen manuscripts, seen movies on TV and in the theater, it's almost a cliche, but if cancer can be said to have any compensations, surely that is it: the final meetings, the wait together. The moment when the mother, while peeling potatoes or sorting clothes or setting her hair for the trip to the hospital, says some simple word or tells some new story and the daughter sees, for all of her life, what the love between them has been. The days when the daughter, waiting at the hospital, reviews her own life, and taking her mother's frail hand says, "Thank you" or "I'm sorry," or simply "Mother, I'm here. Don't worry, I'm here." If cancer can be said to have any compensations, surely it is in the cliche of time allowed. Time to say what can no longer wait to be discovered. Time when death is not merely a thought to put your teeth on edge, to be dismissed with a swallow, when life is marked clearly by beginnings and endings, by spoken words that mean something and change everything.

the BBC were obliged to play short extracts of the song through gritted teeth. It’s a shame they weren’t paying more attention to Jimmy Savile instead of writhing on the hook of a tongue-in-cheek horror-movie soundtrack.

Crichton remains the only writer to have a number one book, movie, and TV show in the same year.

The irony I’ve always found most haunting about Grizzly Man was how close it came to avoiding its ending, thus never being made at all. How close Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard came to going home. They’d called it a season, packed up their gear, and got as far as the airport ticket counter before deciding to return to the Alaskan bush awhile longer. As if they’d heard a call to go back. Had Lydia seen this, and never told me? She would know I had. And trusted I would understand exactly what it meant when, after a trip to the bathroom at Vancouver International, I found her seat in our gate’s waiting area empty. Or if not right away, I’d get the message eventually. When I missed our flight, too, I couldn’t say if it was because I was still waiting for her to come back. Or because I wasn’t aware of when everyone else started to board. Or because I was trying to work up the courage to go after her, but couldn’t get past my fear of the mess that might be waiting. Mostly I wished I’d paid more attention to how much of herself Lydia must have seen in Stefan—alive in the wrong time, unable to see anything more ahead for her. All I’d ever wanted was someone to watch movies with, and talk about what they meant before we went to bed. Profound ones. Silly ones. All the ones in between. It seemed so simple, so little to ask for. So why couldn’t I have reached out a hand’s length farther, and accepted it? But as I sat transfixed by the sky, by the clouds and all they concealed, the maker of teeth made it clear. That’s not how this universe works. That’s not how any of this works.

In movies, SF dominates utterly: by my count, 57 of the top 100 movies of all time, and nine of the top ten. The only top ten film that isn’t SF is Titanic, made by a director who cut his teeth making SF films.

both hands against the door. “Feet wider apart. That’s right. Like in the American movies.” Satisfied, Qazi patted the man down. “What, no gun? A GRU man without a gun …” Qazi carefully felt the man’s crotch and the arms above the wrists. “First humor and now this! The GRU will become a laughingstock. But of course there is a microphone.” Qazi lifted all the pens from the Russian’s shirt pocket and examined them, one by one. “It had better be here, Chekhov, or you will have to part with your buttons and your shoes.” It was in the third pen. “Now turn around and sit against the door.” The Russian’s face was covered with perspiration, his fleshy lips twisted in a sneer. “The shoes.” Qazi examined them carefully and tossed them back. “Now the coat.” This he scrutinized minutely. From the uppermost of the large three buttons on the front of the coat a very fine wire was just visible buried amid the thread that held the button on. Qazi sawed the button free with a small pocketknife, then dropped the pen and button down a commode. He tossed the coat back to Chekhov. “And the belt.” After a quick glance, Qazi handed it back. “Hurry, we have much to say to each other.” He unscrewed the silencer and replaced the pistol in his ankle holster. He opened the door as the Russian scrambled awkwardly to his feet. An hour later the two men were seated in the Sistine Chapel against the back wall, facing the altar and Michelangelo’s masterpiece The Last Judgment behind it. On the right the high windows admitted a subdued light. Qazi kept his eyes on the tourists examining the paintings on the ceiling and walls. “Is it in Rome, as General Simonov promised?” “Yes. But you must tell us why you want it.” “Is it genuine, or is it a masterpiece from an Aquarium print shop?” The Aquarium was the nickname for GRU headquarters in Moscow. The Russian’s lips curled, revealing yellow, impacted teeth. This was his smile. “We obtained it from Warrant Officer Walker.” “Ah, those Americans! One wonders just how long they knew about Walker’s activities.” The Russian raised his shoulders and lowered them. “Why do you want the document?” “El Hakim has not authorized me to reveal his reasons. Not that we don’t trust you. We value the goodwill of the Soviet Union most highly. And we intend to continue to cultivate that goodwill. But to reveal what you do not need to know is to take the risk that the Americans will learn of our plans through their activities against you.” “If you are implying they have penetrated—” “Chekhov, I am not implying anything. I am merely weighing risks. And I am being very forthright with you. No subterfuge. No evasion. Just the plain truth. Surely a professional like you can appreciate that?” “This document is very valuable.

At some point I must have fallen asleep on the couch I’d been sharing with Chase because an explosion on the TV jerked me awake. “It’s just the movie,” he whispered in my direction and ran his fingers over my cheek, “don’t move yet Princess.” “Don’t move? Why?” “I’m almost done, give me another minute or two.” I heard his hand moving back and forth across the paper slowly and waited until he kneeled down in front of the couch so his face was directly in front of mine. My breath caught and his electric blue eyes glanced down to my barely parted lips. His tongue absently wetted his lips and his teeth lightly bit down on his bottom one as his gaze roamed my face. “Why couldn’t I move?” I managed to ask when he started closing the distance between us. He abruptly stopped and blinked a few times, “Oh, um. Well … here. Just don’t freak out, okay? I wasn’t trying to be creepy.” “You’re not supposed to tell someone not to freak out, those words alone cause them to freak out.” Chase smirked, “Okay, well then don’t hit me or use your pressure point training on me again.” Before I could roll my eyes at him, he brought his sketch pad up in front of me and my jaw dropped. I felt my cheeks burn and he took that the wrong way. Snatching the pad of paper back up, he cursed softly. “I knew it was creepy.” “Chase,” I breathed and shook my head in an attempt to clear my thoughts, “that wasn’t creepy. Can I see it again?” When he didn’t make an attempt to move I reached my arm toward the book, “Please.” He handed it over with a sigh and looked at me with a sad smile, “I’m sorry, but you looked too perfect. I couldn’t let that opportunity pass.” My stupid blush came back with force when he said that and I focused at his drawing. It was amazing, somewhat embarrassing, but remarkable none the less. With the shading and the detail he’d captured of my upper body and face, it almost looked like a black and white photo. It was perfect. From my chest, throat and slightly open mouth to the way my hair fell around my face and my eyelashes rested against my cheeks, it was one hundred percent me. He even had my hand clutching the pillow under my head that was resting on his leg, as well as the blanket that had been pulled up to the swell of my breasts. Goose bumps covered my body as I realized he’d spent however long staring at, and replicating, every part of me while I’d been completely unaware. He was wrong, it wasn’t creepy, it was beautiful and strangely intimate. “Chase, it–” I cleared my throat and tried again, “It’s incredible.” Incredible didn’t cover it. “Yeah?” I looked up into his eyes and smiled, “Yeah.” We stayed there staring at each other, my mind and heart completely torn in two. One half desperately wanted to act on the feelings his drawing had stirred up in me, and the other was screaming at me to sit up and scoot away from him. Before I could try to make a decision, another series of explosions came from the TV and we both jolted away from each other. My

I closed the doors and turned to tell Clay the disappointing news.  Instead of staying in the living room as I’d thought, he stood right behind me.  All that came out was a strangled “gah.”  He flashed a smile so wide that I saw teeth and couldn’t help but smile back. “Har-har.  I told you no suspense movies.  Life is scary enough without them.  Oh, and false alarm on the cookies.  We’re missing some main ingredients.” He picked up my car keys and dangled them in front of me. “It’s tempting, but unless I want to get a part-time job, I can’t afford to keep spending the money I’ve saved.  I’ve got to stick to the budget so it lasts through till spring.  If we can manage to keep the heat off until November, I should have cookie money for Christmas.  That’s when cookies are best, anyhow.  I’ll just need to start wearing more clothes inside.” I

I recognized myself again. The pale, spiritless ghost had been replaced by a slightly tired and moderately puffy version of my former normal self. I was no beauty queen, not by a long shot…but I was me again. The shower had been, if not an exorcism, a baptism. I’d been reborn. I shuddered, imagining what Marlboro Man had thought every time he’d seen me shuffle around in my dingy white terry cloth slippers, my hair on top of my head in a neon green scrunchie. I brushed my teeth, shook my hair, and walked out of the bathroom…just as Marlboro Man was waking up. “Wow,” he said, pausing midstretch. “You look good, Mama.” I smiled. That night, Tim came over. Betsy made wings and brownies, and the five of us--Marlboro Man, Tim, Betsy, the baby, and I--sat and talked, laughed, and watched a John Wayne movie. I was exhausted and depleted. And it was one of the best nights of my life.

But first a description: Clara Bowden was beautiful in all senses except maybe, by virtue of being black, the classical. Clara Bowden was magnificently tall, black as ebony and crushed sable, with hair plaited in a horseshoe which pointed up when she felt lucky, down when she didn’t. At this moment it was up. It is hard to know whether that was significant. She needed no bra – she was independent, even of gravity – she wore a red halterneck which stopped below her bust, underneath which she wore her belly button (beautifully) and underneath that some very tight yellow jeans. At the end of it all were some strappy heels of a light brown suede, and she came striding down the stairs on them like some kind of vision or, as it seemed to Archie as he turned to observe her, like a reared-up thoroughbred. Now, as Archie understood it, in movies and the like it is common for someone to be so striking that when they walk down the stairs the crowd goes silent. In life he had never seen it. But it happened with Clara Bowden. She walked down the stairs in slow motion, surrounded by afterglow and fuzzy lighting. And not only was she the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, she was also the most comforting woman he had ever met. Her beauty was not a sharp, cold commodity. She smelt musty, womanly, like a bundle of your favorite clothes. Though she was disorganized physically – legs and arms speaking a slightly different dialect from her central nervous system – even her gangly demeanour seemed to Archie exceptionally elegant. She wore her sexuality with an older woman’s ease, and not (as with most of the girls Archie had run with in the past) like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it or when to just put it down. ‘Cheer up, bwoy,’ she said in a lilting Caribbean accent that reminded Archie of That Jamaican Cricketer, ‘it might never happen.’ ‘I think it already has.’ Archie, who had just dropped a fag from his mouth which has been burning itself to death anyway, saw Clara quickly tread it underfoot. She gave him a wide grin that revealed possibly her one imperfection. A complete lack of teeth in the top of her mouth. ‘Man…dey get knock out,’ she lisped, seeing his surprise. ‘But I tink to myself: come de end of de world, d’Lord won’t mind if I have no toofs.’ She laughed softly.

Charlie’s kisses, were, I suppose, in The Book of Kisses. But they’d be in the chapter called Devouring. There was biting and gnawing and teeth-banging in them, an urgent air of mouth-to-mouth combat, wild and violent and driving to an end that was out of reach, and known to be, but only the more pressing for that. And pressing was a big part of it. She pulled me against her in a mime of movie stars, but the three-dimensionality of our bodies made a bumping mockery of blending, elbows and knees proving extra to the parts required and noses on standby with an abashed air of being in the way. Of course, I was lost from the first moment, in a whirl carousel of taste touch sight smell, and sounds (all s’s – squelch,

A splash of light snuck beneath the a dressing room door. He heard a groan. A shuffle. A bump. A heavy sigh. "Uh, too tight." He walked toward the back, stopping outside the dressing room. The door was cracked a fraction. He rested a shoulder against the wall, and glanced inside. Grace as Catwoman blew his mind. A feline fantasy. The three-way mirror tripled his pleasure. He viewed her from every angle. Hot, sleek, fierce. The lady could fight Batman in her skintight black leather catsuit and come out the winner. After a moment she scrunched her nose, slapped her palms against her thighs. Stuck out her tongue at her reflection in the mirrors. He saw what had her so frustrated. Sympathized with her disappointment. Her costume didn't fit. The front zipper hadn't fully cleared her cleavage, which was deep and visible. She wore no bra. She gave a little hop, and her breasts bounced. Full and plump. He felt a tug at his groin. Superhero lust. He cleared his throat and made his presence known. She caught his image in the corner of the glass, and reached for the fitting room chair, positioning it between them. Like that would keep him from her. He should've looked away, but couldn't. He sensed her embarrassment. Her panic. Flight? She had nowhere to go. He blocked the door. He wasn't leaving until they'd talked. "Archibald's going to love your costume," he initiated. She didn't find him funny. Her gaze narrowed behind the molded cat-eye mask with attached ears. Her fingers clenched in her elbow-length gloves. Inspired by the movie The Dark Knight, she'd added a whip and a gun holster. Her thigh-high stiletto boots were killer, adding five inches to her height. Her image would stick with him forever. She backed against the center mirror, and nervously fingered the open flaps over her breasts. A yank on the zipper broke the tab. The metal teeth parted, and the gap widened, revealing the round inner curves of her breasts. A hint of her nipples. Dusky pink. All the way down to the dent of her navel.

The horror of Jaws is not the rows of teeth, but the endless sea of white faces who are afraid of losing money knowing the ocean has always been full of sharks, blood, and everything else they cannot see.

Andrei avoided the internet as well and this evasion only added to his gloom. He loved music, especially old songs, and he loved movies, of all sorts. If he had the patience, sometimes he would read. While most of the pages he turned bored him to sleep, certain books with certain lines disarranged him. Some literature brought him to his feet, laughing and howling in his room. When the book was right, it was bliss and he wept. His room hushed with serenity and indebtedness. When he turned to his computer, however, or took out his phone, he would inevitably come across a viral trend or video that took the art he loved and turned it into a joke. The internet, in Andrei’s desperate eyes, managed to make fun of everything serious. And if one did not laugh, they were not intelligent. The internet could not be slowed and no protest to criticize its exploitation of art could be made because recreations of art hid perfectly under the veneer of mockery and was thus, impenetrable. It was easy to use Chopin’s ‘Sonata No. 2’ for a quick laugh, to reduce the ‘Funeral March’ to background music. It was a sneaky way for a digital creator to be considered an artist—and parodying the classics made them appear cleverer than the original artist. Meanwhile, Andrei’s body had healed playing Chopin alone in his apartment. He would frailly replay movie moments, too, that he later found the world edited and ripped apart with its cheap teeth. And everyone ate the internet’s crumbs. This cruel derision was impossible to escape. But enough jokes, memes, and glam over someone’s precious source of life would eventually make a sensitive body numb. And Andrei was afraid of that. He needed his fountain of hope unblemished. For this reason, he escaped the internet’s claws and only surrendered to it for e-mails, navigation, and the weather.

My wife, my kids, my friends—they all think that having an imagination like mine must be quite nice; aside from making all this dough, I can have a little mind-movie whenever things get dull. Mostly they’re right. But every now and then it turns around and bites the shit out of you with these long teeth, teeth that have been filed to points like the teeth of a cannibal. You see things you’d just as soon not see, things that keep you awake until first light. I saw one of those things now, saw it with absolute clarity and certainty.

Top Gun. Your favorite movie.” “Fuck Tom Cruise.” He shook his head. “What an unattainable standard to have as a pilot. And introducing my bedroom to women as ‘my personal cockpit’ never got the reaction I hoped it would.” Frankie looked genuinely distraught and I tampered a laugh by sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. “You’re laughing at a man’s pain.

Grateful for a chance to brush my teeth after sleeping on a train last night, I spend a little extra time on my oral hygiene before plopping back down on the couch and streaming Across the Universe. It’s one of my favorite movies, and tonight is all about comfort. There’s something about Jim Sturgess singing Strawberry Fields Forever that makes my relationship problems fade away.

I previously spoke to Mrs. Newton of such… She's trading your shifts. She spoke to inform you she wishes you a: 'Happy Birthday.'' ‘I- yet can't come over,’ I resolved, clambering for an excuse. ‘I, well, I mustn't watch Romeo and Juliet yet for English.’ Olivia squealed, ‘You have Romeo and Juliet memorized.’ ‘Although Mr. Smith proclaimed, we obliged to notice it performed to thoroughly acknowledge it that's how Shakespeare intended it to be presented.’ Marcel rolled his eyes. ‘You've already seen the movie,’ Olivia accused. ‘Although not the nineteen-sixties version. Mr. Smith said it was the best.’ Subsequently, Olivia lost the self-satisfied smile and glared at me. ‘This can be obvious, or this can be troublesome, Bell, but one way or the others’ Marcel interrupted her threat. ‘Relax, Olivia. If Karly wants to watch a movie, then she can. It's her birthday.’ ‘So there,’ I added. ‘I'll bring her over around seven,’ he continued. ‘That will give you more time to set up.’ Olivia's howling sounded again. ‘Sounds immeasurable good. See you tonight, Bell! It'll be fun, you'll see.’ She grinned- the wide smile revealed all her perfect, glistening teeth-then pecked me on the cheek and danced off moving her first class before I could respond. ‘Marcel, please-’ I started to beg, but he clasped one crisp finger to my lips. ‘Let's review it later. We're going to be late for school.’ No one bothered to stare at us as we took our representative seats in the back of the classroom (we should almost every class together now-it was amazing the favors Marcel could get the female administrators to do for him.)

I was barely ever bad-tempered with Marcel, and my tone made him press his lips together to keep from smiling. When I parked in front of Mr. Anderson’s house, he stretched over to take my face in his hands. He handled me very thoroughly, touching just the tips of his fingers softly against my temples, my cheekbones, my jawline. Like I was exceptionally breakable. Which was specifically the case-compared with him, at most limited. ‘You should be in a good mood, today of all days,’ he muttered. His unseasoned breath crossed my face. ‘Moreover, if I don't want to be in a good mood?’ I asked, my breathing irregular. His golden eyes smoldered. ‘Too bad.’ My head was already spinning by the time he leaned closer and pressed his icy lips against mine. As he intended, no doubt, I forgot all about my worries and concentrated on remembering how to inhale and exhale. His mouth lingered on mine, cold and smooth and gentle until I wrapped my arms around his neck and threw myself into the kiss with a little too much enthusiasm. I could feel his lips curve upward as he let go of my face and reached back to unlock my grip on him. Marcel had drawn many careful lines for our physical relationship, with the intent being to keep me alive. Though I respected the need for maintaining a safe distance between my skin and his razor-sharp, venom-coated teeth, I tended to forget about trivial things like that when he was kissing me. ‘Be good, please,’ he breathed against my cheek. He pressed his lips gently to mine one more time and then pulled away, folding my arms across my stomach. My pulse was thudding in my ears. I put one hand over my heart. It drummed hyperactivity under my palm. ‘Do you think I'll ever get better at this?’ I wondered, mostly to myself. ‘That my heart might someday stop trying to jump out of my chest whenever you touch me?’ ‘I hope not,’ he said, a bit smug. I rolled my eyes. ‘Let's go watch the Capulets and Montagues hack each other up, all right?’ ‘Your wish, my command.’ Marcel sprawled on the couch while I started the movie, fast-forwarding through the opening credits.

A large horsefly accidentally flies directly into her oral cavity before she can speak. Outside in the air, this creature doesn’t seem that big, but from inside her mouth it feels like that giant flying reptile Rodan she once saw in a movie on cable. Her jaws are no match for this frightening pest, who, temporarily blinded in panic, begins biting her tongue with its tiny bloodsucking mouth. But Marsha is ready for any curveball nature might throw her. At first she considers spitting out this invasive monster, but then her reflexes take over and her snapping-turtle-like tongue, hidden behind her freshly glossed lips, rips the unwanted tormentor from the roof of her mouth, and with one bite of her cavity-free teeth, the execution of this pesky intruder is complete. Yes, she swallows.

The Welsh are swine,” said the one-legged man in reply to a question from his son. “Absolute swine. The English are swine, too, but not as bad as the Welsh. Though really they’re the same, but they make an effort not to seem it, and since they know how to pretend, they succeed. The Scots are bigger swine than the English and only a little better than the Welsh. The French are as bad as the Scots. The Italians are little swine. Little swine ready and willing to gobble up their own swine mother. The same can be said of the Austrians: swine, swine, swine. Never trust a Hungarian. Never trust a Bohemian. They’ll lick your hand while they devour your little finger. Never trust a Jew: he’ll eat your thumb and leave your hand covered in slobber. The Bavarians are also swine. When you talk to a Bavarian, son, make sure you keep your belt fastened tight. Better not to talk to Rhinelanders at all: before the cock crows they’ll try to saw off your leg. The Poles look like chickens, but pluck four feathers and you’ll see they’ve got the skin of swine. Same with the Russians. They look like starving dogs but they’re really starving swine, swine that’ll eat anyone, without a second thought, without the slightest remorse. The Serbs are the same as the Russians, but miniature. They’re like swine disguised as Chihuahuas. Chihuahuas are tiny dogs, the size of a sparrow, that live in the north of Mexico and are seen in some American movies. Americans are swine, of course. And Canadians are big ruthless swine, although the worst swine from Canada are the French-Canadians, just as the worst swine from America are the Irish-American swine. The Turks are no better. They’re sodomite swine, like the Saxons and the Westphalians. All I can say about the Greeks is that they’re the same as the Turks: bald, sodomitic swine. The only people who aren’t swine are the Prussians. But Prussia no longer exists. Where is Prussia? Do you see it? I don’t. Sometimes I imagine that while I was in the hospital, that filthy swine hospital, there was a mass migration of Prussians to some faraway place. Sometimes I go out to the rocks and gaze at the Baltic and try to guess where the Prussian ships sailed. Sweden? Norway? Finland? Not on your life: those are swine lands. Where, then? Iceland, Greenland? I try but I can’t make it out. Where are the Prussians, then? I climb up on the rocks and search for them on the gray horizon. A churning gray like pus. And I don’t mean once a year. Once a month! Every two weeks! But I never see them, I can never guess what point on the horizon they set sail to. All I see is you, your head in the waves as they wash back and forth, and then I have a seat on a rock and for a long time I don’t move, watching you, as if I’ve become another rock, and even though sometimes I lose sight of you, or your head comes up far away from where you went under, I’m never afraid, because I know you’ll come up again, there’s no danger in the water for you. Sometimes I actually fall asleep, sitting on a rock, and when I wake up I’m so cold I don’t so much as look up to make sure you’re still there. What do I do then? Why, I get up and come back to town, teeth chattering. And as I turn down the first streets I start to sing so that the neighbors tell themselves I’ve been out drinking down at Krebs’s.

it screamed.  The sound filled the cold autumn air and made it even colder.  It crawled under every tiny pebble and burrowed into every knot-hole in every tree.  Even the falling snow seemed to pause as if it were chilled by such a sound.  It pounded icicles through Cliff’s ears and somehow down into the roots of his teeth. 

Shareholders,” murmured Eddie, the word echoing meaninglessly in his head. His brain had screeched to a halt in front of an earlier word in the sentence, and it now stood (in a figurative sense) stock still, with its eyes wide and its jaw open, staring at the word in awe. Lovely Wanda Kwan, the vaguely Asian-American publishing company representative, had uttered, through her lip gloss and perfect teeth, the one word that every writer secretly yearns to hear. That word is movie. “Ms. Kwan,” he began.

Taking a trip with the Air Force Special Operations Wing folks is not like a flight on a normal airliner. For one thing, passengers and crew are all armed to the teeth. The seating is awful, the noise is incredible, and there is no movie. Your stewardess is likely to be a guy wearing a shoulder holster, and he will not bring you a pillow.

Guys, I’m not in labor. I just moved too quickly, OK?’’ Aisling said. ‘‘Take your hands off her,’’ Drake said in a low voice that sounded very much like a growl. Jim sucked in its breath, sitting up to watch. ‘‘I’m not hurting her,’’ Gabriel answered, bending over her belly as he continued to gently prod her. ‘‘I’m simply trying to ascertain if she’s in labor or not. Aisling, is the pain sharp or dull?’’ The door opened, and Gabriel’s two bodyguards, Tipene and Maata, entered. Behind them came one of Drake’s men, a thick-necked, redheaded man named István. The latter picked up on Gabriel’s question. ‘‘Aisling is in pain? She is having the baby?’’ ‘‘I should examine you more fully,’’ Gabriel said, smiling at Aisling as he took her hand. ‘‘Do not worry, Aisling. I have delivered many dragons over the centuries. My mother is a very good midwifeand has taught me well.’’ Drake snatched up her other hand. ‘‘You will not examine my mate any further! We have an excellent green-dragon midwife who is attending her. Now, get away from her before I have you removed!’’ Aisling looked perfectly fine to me. She rolled her eyes, casting a pleading look skyward. I might not have experience in this area, but it was clear to me that she was not in labor. I shot a glare at Gabriel, grinding my teeth just a little at the stupidity of what was normally such a bright man, my fingers itching to pry his hand from Aisling’s. ‘‘I will tell you once more—remove your hands from her!’’ Drake’s voice got even more menacing. ‘‘Gabriel, I think she would know if she was in labor,’’ I said, nudging the dragon of mydreams a bit more forcefully. ‘‘A voice of reason at last,’’ Aisling said, giving me a smile. ‘‘Guys, I’m not—’’ István turned in the doorway and bellowed out of it. ‘‘Pál! Call the midwife! Aisling is in labor! I will call Nora and Rene. They wish to be here, yes? Should I boil water?’’ He evidently asked the last bit of Maata, who, as the female member of Gabriel’s attendants, was obviously expected to know the answer. Maata looked surprised. ‘‘Would it make you feel better to boil water?’’ she asked. István nodded his head vigorously. ‘‘It is done, is it not? The boiling of water? It is important. I saw it in a movie.’’ ‘‘Then, by all means, boil water,’’ she answered. István nodded again, announced to the room in general, ‘‘I boil water!’’ and rushed out to suit action to word. Pál, the second of Drake’s two redheaded bodyguards, slammed into István as he was leaving, scattering apologies as he dashed into the room, a cell phone in his hand. ‘‘The midwife’s phone is busy!’’ he said, offering the phone to Drake as proof. ‘‘Oh, man, if there’s going to be baby juice and blood and guck, I’m getting out of here,’’ Jim said, sidling around the clutch of people that surrounded Aisling. ‘‘I’m going to Amelie’s to be with Cecile. Someone tell me when it’s all over.’’ ‘‘Hello, can anyone hear me? I’m not in labor!’’ Aisling said. ‘‘What should I do?’’ Pál asked Drake, shaking the phone at him. ‘‘It is busy! Busy! How can it be busy?’’ A little wisp of smoke escaped Drake’s nose as he glared at the phone. ‘‘It should not be busy. Go fetch her. There is no business she can have as important as this.’’ Pál didn’t stop to answer; he just bolted from the room. ‘‘Oh, for the love of Pete! I’m not in pain! And unless dragons have some sort ofpainless labor, a notion your mother vehemently says is false, then I’m not having the baby,’’ Aisling said, but was drowned out by Maata asking if Gabriel needed help at the same time Tipene offered to take overmidwife phone duty.

No one, good, bad or indifferent. If it’s gangs you’re thinking of you can drop that angle right now. He wasn’t that kind; he didn’t have the time. Know what that kid was doing? Working nights at the hotel, sleeping mornings, helping me out in the shop afternoons, and going to night school three times a week in the bargain! The couple of evenings he had left over he usually took his girl to the movies. He was no slouch, he wanted to get somewhere. And now look at him!” I turned away. “If they’d only broken his leg, or knocked out his teeth, or anything — anything but what they did do! I’m going home and drink myself to sleep, I can’t stand thinking about it any more.

doctor’s white coat. Ripped from the victim no doubt. Gus hoped the person was dead at the time, and he hoped he wouldn’t remember any unpleasant sights yet to be discovered. He suffered during the nights when he was home, trying to sleep. Booze helped when he had it, and drank heavily when he did. It would knock him out and keep the nightmares at bay. Nightmares that brought their own private movies, with mouths full of rotting teeth. Gus took a breath and became still, listening for anything beyond the room. He moved to the doorway and glanced about. All clear. He possessed

Harvey didn’t set his phone to beep or buzz or vibrate like a normal person. Harvey’s phone screeched with a string piece from the Hitchcock movie Psycho, the scene with Janet Leigh in the shower, the knife rising and falling, the string section shrieking with short, staccato stabs, the lone violin slashing through the fermata with discordant glissandos, more violins joining the first, violas adding their teeth, mad strings schooling like orchestral sharks at a blood-drunk feast.

Sure. Well pal, you’re not the only one. Two women came in and also reported memory loss on the 20th. They think they were raped. You’re so ugly nobody would want to rape you. But you’re ugly so you’d probably rape anything that brushes its teeth. You thought you’d be clever like the movies right?

He gently nipped at my bottom lip with his teeth, and I thought I’d melt right into him, right there in that movie theater. Here lies Holland Briggs. Completely undone by the best kisser she’d ever met.

I made my peace with the place, but never went a day without feeling around for things that weren’t there, the way your tongue pushes into the holes where you’ve lost teeth. I don’t just mean cows, or apple trees, it runs deeper. Weather, for instance. Air, the way it smells from having live things breathing into it, grass and trees and I don’t know what, creatures of the soil. Sounds, I missed most of all. There was noise, but nothing behind it. I couldn’t get used to the blankness where there should have been bird gossip morning and evening, crickets at night, the buzz saw of cicadas in August. A rooster always sounding off somewhere, even dead in the middle of Jonesville. It’s like the movie background music. Notice it or don’t, but if the volume goes out, the movie has no heart. I’d oftentimes have to stop and ask myself what season it was. I never realized what was holding me to my place on the planet of earth: that soundtrack. That, and leaf colors and what’s blooming in the roadside ditches this week, wild sweet peas or purple ironweed or goldenrod. And stars. A sky as dark as sleep, not this hazy pinkish business, I’m saying blind man’s black. For a lot of us, that’s medicine. Required for the daily reboot.

What I need is someone to eat off the same plate with me. Someone who makes me comfortable enough to be silly, someone I can dance poorly around, someone who gets it when I cry at commercials. I also need someone honest enough to tell me I have food in my teeth or too much product in my hair. I want someone who kisses me as if it’s the last scene of a romantic movie and we’re on a bridge with a perfect sunset behind us, even though we’re just in line at the grocery store. After all those years of teen magazines asking some form of the question “What Does John Stamos Want in a Girl?” I think it’s simpler than anyone could have imagined.