Victoria Secret Quotes

You should know the difference between secrets and lies.

One dark night I spilled my secrets to him, on a road thick with summer heat. I was the girl who tried to steal his money then. Now, winter looms, and I’m the girl who stole his life.

Do you always wear underwear like this, or is it for me?” I rolled to my back and pulled the sheet to my waist. “It isn’t for you, I’ve been wearing underwear like this since Gram gave me my first Frederick’s of Hollywood box on my sixteenth birthday. Now, I owe Victoria’s Secret my first-born child.” Before speaking again, Lee waited several seconds that can only be described as ‘loaded silence’. While this silence was going on, he pulled the sheet back down. “You’re tellin’ me that since you were sixteen you’ve been sittin’ next to me every year at Christmas Dinner wearin’ underwear like this?

Red-hot anger takes away a lot of the heartache.

That's it! Victoria's Secret and I are through!

If people could just understand how it actually felt to be depressed, obsessed, frightened, out of control, maybe they’d be more tolerant, more understanding.

I didn’t feel that I had any good qualities. Or rather, none were good enough. Nothing I did or said was good enough, but I couldn’t make anyone understand the way I felt.

Teachers knew every one of the students, their secrets, their grades, their home situations. And all the students knew the teachers. It was like teachers were people who finally were the most popular at school.

WESLEY AYERS is the stranger in the halls of the Coronado. He is the Keeper in the garden who shares my secret. He is the boy who reads me books. He is the one who teaches me how to touch.

They’re on Lee and Indy Sex Watch.” “Come again?” “They want to know when we’ve done it.” Silence. I went on. “If we don’t do it soon, they might force us to at gunpoint.” “Christ.” “I know. No pressure though. I told them we’re taking is slow.” “You have to report in?” “I kind of feel obliged.” “How’s that?” I didn’t want to tell him I’d recruited them both for Lee Maneuvres in the past, so I said, “Never mind.” “If something doesn’t happen soon, it’s gonna be bad. I can’t keep focussed, all I can think of is what’s on your Victoria’s Secret credit statement. “You need to keep focused,” I told him, “bad guys are after me.” “Tell me about it.

I had no idea that the simple act of running a sharp blade across my wrist would change everything so completely. I wasn’t after happiness anymore. I just wanted to survive.

And mortal terror in a female was Z's favorite turn-on. He got off on it like most males favored crap from Victoria's Secret.

What I wanted was a simple response. I didn’t want to feel, that was too difficult. I wanted to hurt, I wanted real, tangible, physical pain. That I could understand.

The guy had more secrets than Victoria

...almost every pearl on sale today was born of the planned sexual violation of a small creature, and that considerable suffering hangs on those necklace strings.

Some days, it was enough just to know that I had a packet of blades in the house. They were a cold, very sharp, security blanket.

Funny how when we start to tell a secret, we can’t stop. Something falls open in us, and the sheer momentum of letting go pushes us on.

The shared secret of our second lives hangs between us, not like a weight, but like a lifeline.

Every house has secrets

You telling me there's more in there? What is this place? A fuckin' breeding farm for Victoria's Secret?

It makes you realize how basically everything we do comes down to a) mating or b) competing for resources. It’s just like Animal Planet, only we’ve got Cover Girl and Victoria’s Secret instead of colored feathers and fancy markings, and the violence occurs at the Nordstrom’s Half-Yearly Sale.

Were you planning on telling me?” I asked my husband. “Not today,” he said. I stood aghast. No idea why. The guy had more secrets than Victoria.

To be a desirable woman—the sky’s the limit. Have every surface of your body waxed. Have manicures every week. Wear heels every day. Look like a Victoria’s Secret Angel even though you work in an office. It’s not enough to be an average-sized woman with a bit of hair and an all-right sweater. That doesn’t cut it. We’re told we have to look like the women who are paid to look like that as their profession.

For the first time in months, I felt together. Sharp. In hurting myself, I had at last found a way to release the pressure. But it was more than that. I was now different. I felt different. I’d discovered a way to control my feelings. Just because self-mutilation wasn’t deemed an acceptable coping mechanism didn’t mean I was going to stop doing it

The great thing about real life is that it belongs to you. You can make it up as you go along!

I realized it was like a dating agency: the ions are the lost souls looking for mates; the electrolyte is the agency that can help them find each other.

When you have an ancient heart and childlike spirit you must feel deeply but go lightly. To trace and learn the language of waves. How all the seas carry secrets, yet still move freely. I am still learning how to be water.

A confession: I am not a good friend. Lyndsey writes letters, Lyndsey makes calls. Lyndsey makes plans. Everything I do is in reaction to everything she does, and I’m terrified of the day she decides not to pick up the phone, not to take the first step. I’m terrified of the day Lyndsey outgrows my secrets, my ways. Outgrows me.

I feel naked in my Tommy hoodie and Victoria's Secret sweatpants with PINK written across the ass. The sweatpants aren't pink though - they're gray. This always confuses me when I put them on, because shouldn't they say GRAY - on the backside? Maybe Victoria's secret is she's colorblind.

He is a prince and, worst of all, the queen's son. I didn't want to trust him before this very reason, for the secrets he kept hidden. Or maybe this is what he was hiding all along...his own heart.

Relief was what I was looking for that day, and I didn’t care how I got it. What I wanted - what I needed - was a pain that I could see and deal with. I couldn’t cope with the mess inside of me any longer, and cutting myself seemed to be the best solution. I knew that it would work. What I didn’t know was that I was about t engage in a behavior that was not just dangerous but highly, highly addictive.

Angels don't exist. Flawless skin, perfect hair, flowing white robes, all topped off with an adorable set of fluffy pink wings. Yeah. If you see that wandering around, you've probably stumbled onto the set of a Victoria's Secret catalog shoot. Prepare to get your butt kicked by security.

Next is a box of truffles from Godiva and then a gift certificate from Victoria’s Secret for an unknown amount. It’s made out to my boobs, which Alex officially asks on a date.

fucker, I know I just pissed all over your heart and ripped our eight year relationship to shreds, but can you put my Victoria's Secret underwear down?

Most things that pop into my head are really weird, like that one time when I thought about Shrek in Victoria's Secret underwear.

Her expression is from Page 18 of the Victoria's Secret catalogue.

But the very first rule of friendship is don’t keep secrets.

She felt the cold blast from the sterile air conditioning on her bare arms and thighs, as she ambled down the center of the shopping complex's ground floor. The scene was a swirl of candy bright lights--the Victoria's Secret fuchsia signboard, signboards which lured one to purchase "confidence," or "sexual appeal," or whatever it was that was being advertised--the fluorescent lights in each store, contrasting with the shiny, black-tiled walls and eye-catching speckled marble tiles on the ground. One could lick the floor--the tiles were spotless, clean like the fake air she was breathing in, like the atoms and cells in her that were decaying in stale neglect.

Wesley's touch lingers on my skin. His music echoes through my head. I remind myself as I scrub my skin that we are both liars and con artists. That we will always have secrets, some that bind us and some that cut between us, slicing us into pieces.

Mmm, butt bagels." Elody reaches into the bag and pulls out a bagel, half squashed, then makes a big deal of taking an enormous bite out of it. "Taste like Victoria's Secret." "Taste like thong floss," I say. "Taste like crack," Lindsay says. "Taste like fart," Elody says, and Lindsay spits coffee on the dashboard, and I start laughing and can't stop, and all the way to school we're thinking of flavors for butt bagels, and I'm thinking that this---my life, my friends---might be weird or screwy or imperfect or damaged or whatever, but it's never seemed better to me.

Look through people,” I tell her, my voice muffled by the helmet. “Smile without kindness. No small talk, no court talk. Act as if you have a million secrets, and you’re the only one important enough to know them all.” She nods, taking this all in stride. After all, Cal and I have both instructed her on how to pass as Maven. This is merely a reminder, a last glance at the book before the test. “I’m not a fool,” she replies coldly, and I almost punch her in the jaw. She is not Maven rings in my head, louder than a bell. “I think you’ve got it,” Kilorn says as he stands. He grabs my arm, pulling me slightly away. “Mare nearly killed you.

I say seduce her, seduce her tonight. Break the door down if you have to. Tell her all those things you said to me about her. You will love her more tomorrow than today and how you want to die with her hand in yours–which is an excellent line, by the way, that I fully intend to borrow when the time comes.

Victoria's got her secrets. Hey, so do I!

Maybe I should let my faithful manservant answer the rest of your questions, since he seems to have all the answers." "I'm saving her time," Bodie replied. "She brings you a redhead, you'll give her grief. Look for women with class, Annabelle. That's most important. The sophisticated types who went to boarding schools and speak French. She has to be the real thing because he can spot a phony a mile away. And he likes them athletic." "Of course he does," she said dryly. "Athletic, domestic, gorgeous, brilliant, socially connected, and pathologically submissive. It'll be a snap." "You forgot hot." Heath smiled. "And defeatist thinking is for losers. If you want to be a success in this world, Annabelle, you need a positive attitude. Whatever the client wants, you get it for him. First rule of a successful business." "Uh-huh. What about career women?" "I don't see how that would work." "The kind of potential mate you're describing isn't going to be sitting around waiting for her prince to show up. She's heading a major corporation. In between those Victoria's Secret modeling gigs." He lifted an eyebrow. "Attitude, Annabelle. Attitude.

In precious opals there might be a dash of red here, a seductive swirl of blue there, and in the center, perhaps, a flirtatious glance of green. But each stone flickers with a unique fire and a good opal is one with an opinion of its own.

With the right lingerie, you don't need clothes.

She switched places with her shadow because suffering changes shape and happens secretly.

What began as Cal's breakdown has become mine. One dark night I spilled my secrets to him, on a road thick with summer heat. I was the girl who tried to steal his money then. Now, winter looms, and I'm the girl who stole his life.

Four years of service, and the Archive is still so full of secrets—some big, like altering; some small, like this. The more of them I learn, the more I realize how little I know, and the more I wonder about the things I have been told. The rules I have been taught.

New Rule: You don't need a paper shredder. I've seen your mail--it's not that interesting. What are you worried about, that the magazine from the auto club might fall into the wrong hands? I hate to break it to you 007, but the Victoria's Secret catalog isn't actually a secret.

Would you do it again?" The words sting sharply. "Would you risk me for your terrorist friends again?" I would. I don't say it out loud, but Lucas sees my answer in my eyes. "I kept your secret." It's worse than any insult he could throw at me. The knowledge that he protected me, even though I didn't deserve it, gnaws at my core. "But now I know you're not different, not anymore," he continues, almost spitting. "You're the same as all the rest. Heartless, selfish, cold—just like us. They taught you well.

She took them off when she saw Georgie."Hello, Victoria, did you come to tell me a secret?

She loved having secrets. She loved that no one in her life knew everything about her. She was a puzzle, and only she had all the pieces.

The more we cling to virtues like humility, selflessness, modesty, and purity, the more beautiful we become - not only in His eyes, but also in the eyes of others. You can't airbrush that.

I scrolled through your order history at Victoria’s Secret.” “Well, that’s not at all creepy,” she deadpanned. “Did you know there are items in your shopping cart? Sweaters. Lots of thick, long, skin-covering sweaters. Frankly, it confused me.” “Maybe I already own plenty of lingerie. Considering I walk to work, sweaters are much more practical. Plus they’re awfully cute.” “I added a few things to your cart and checked out for you. I paid for it with my credit card. Expedited the shipping too, so you should have it by Monday.” “You added a few things?” “One hint: not sweaters.” “How wildly inappropriate.” “Kid in a candy store. Couldn’t help myself.

I meant to ask Erik to say something to Victoria, to follow what had happened at the dance, but I couldn't settle on the right words. An apology for fleeing, sure, but then what? 'I only think of you as a friend'? 'I think we should see other people'? 'It's not you, it's the fact that I'm secretly a girl who sacrificed a foot and a half of perfectly good hair to the dark gods of a capella'?

Her heart leapt, which made no sense at all. This was not to be an affair of the heart. There would be affection certainly, but nothing more. Apparently her heart wasn't aware of her plans. Odd, she'd never known it to be rebellious before.

Ah, sir, that's just mean. She's not a Victoria's Secret model, but she's pretty in her way.

Ah, sir, that's just mean. She's not a Victoria's Secret model. but she's pretty in her way.

How strange is life. Suddenly when one has almost made up one’s mind to a certain action it casually throws an opportunity into one’s path.

Sure, and maybe a cabal of Victoria’s Secret lingerie models would crack the secret of hydrogen fusion.

Victoria didn't know why, but something in her daughter's tone put a chill on her arm.

Sometimes the mind is cruel: it tells us we are worth no more than our possessions, and that without them we would be nothing. And when we believe it, perhaps it is true.

Communists liked history very much. It just had to be the right history. They liked to remember it selectively.

Sometimes when we lose something of importance what we have left becomes even more precious.

Sometimes, even psychic ghost best friends have secrets.

I swear, I’m going to cut the tongues from the mouths of everyone here. Is no secret sacred?

Have you ever had a lyric from a really crappy song or advertising jingle get stuck in your head? Something that just won't go away, no matter how much you don't want it to be there? Imagine if, instead of a silly piece of music, it was an image. Imagine that image was something you found disturbing; say, rivers of rich burgundy blood gushing from slashes in your forearms. What if, instead of this being a fleeting, irritating image, it took hold in your mind. It would be there on waking, it would push itself into your thoughts while you were watching television, driving, sitting at your desk. What if, gradually, your mind became your own personal continuously screening horror movie, starring yourself. What would you do? Would you feel compelled to act on these thoughts? Do you think, if you did, it would help? Would you think yourself mad? Would you tell anyone?

Then I shall be devastated. My heart will be crushed as thoroughly as dust beneath your feet". "Oh, we can't have that". Her eyes widened in an innocent manner he didn't believe for a moment. "I quite detest dust".

The Jewish historian Hannah Arendt, in her book about the trial of Nazi administrator Adolf Eichmann, observes that in many cases the Nazi camps were run by ordinary bureaucrats: the evil was astonishing in its banality.

I can’t fathom the day when I’ll be able to figure out how to independently maneuver my way into my bra, like I used to, every day since I was thirteen. The left arm through the left loop, the left boob into the left cup. Never mind the clasp in the back. My poor injured brain gets all twisted up like some circus contortionist even trying to imagine how this procedure would work. I’m supposed to at least try every step of getting dressed on my own, but when it comes to the bra, I no longer bother. My mother just does it for me, and we don’t tell the therapists.She holds up one of my white Victoria’s Secret Miracle Bras. I close my eyes, shutting out the humiliating image of my mother manhandling my boobs. But even with my eyes closed, I can feel her cold fingers against my bare skin, and as I can’t help but picture what she’s doing, humiliation saunters right in, takes a seat, and puts its feet up. Like it does every day now.

Still, Laura said, “my mom decided I was responsible for the rape. I worked at Victoria’s Secret at the time, so she thought I got drawn into that kind of culture that’s sexualizing women and celebrating sexual beauty and things like that.

In 1879 the Bengali scholar S.M. Tagore compiled a more extensive list of ruby colors from the Purana sacred texts: ‘like the China rose, like blood, like the seeds of the pomegranate, like red lead, like the red lotus, like saffron, like the resin of certain trees, like the eyes of the Greek partridge or the Indian crane…and like the interior of the half-blown water lily.’ With so many gorgeous descriptive possibilities it is curious that in English the two ancient names for rubies have come to sound incredibly ugly.

To be a desirable woman – the sky’s the limit. Have every surface of your body waxed. Have manicures every week. Wear heels every day. Look like a Victoria’s Secret Angel even though you work in an office. It’s not enough to be an average-sized woman with a bit of hair and an all-right jumper. That doesn’t cut it. We’re told we have to look like the women who are paid to look like that as their profession.

My father taught me how to track, how to read the ground and the trees. He taught me that everything has a language, that if you knew the language, you could make the world talk. The grass and the dirt hold secrets, he’d say. The wind and the water carry stories and warnings.

From the pilot's seat, Cal glowers. "He's done enough." He watches me take the chair next to him, seething all the while. "You really want to storm a secret prison built for people like us?" "Would you rather let Julian die?" No answer but for a low hiss. "That's what I thought.

Like pearls that cannot be sprayed too much with perfume or warmed too much with smoke, left alone too much or touched too much, the mother oysters and mussels must be treated gently—as the Scottish pearl-fishers, too, had learned to their regret. These creatures are a barometer of how we are treating our planet. Sometimes in our greed to make them produce pretty things for our pleasure we forget that they deserve our respect.

I expected to be happy, but let me tell you something. Anticipating happiness and being happy are two entirely different things. I told myself that all I wanted to do was go to the mall. I wanted to look at the pretty girls, ogle the Victoria's Secret billboards, and hit on girls at the Sam Goody record store. I wanted to sit in the food court and gorge on junk food. I wanted to go to Bath and Body Works, stand in the middle of the store, and breathe. I wanted to stand there with my eyes closed and just smell, man. I wanted to lose myself in the total capitalism and consumerism of it all, the pure greediness, the pure indulgence, the pure American-ness of it all. I never made it that far. I didn't even make it out of the airport in Baltimore with all its Cinnabons, Starbucks, Brooks Brothers, and Brookstones before realizing that after where we'd been, after what we'd seen, home would never be home again.

A little politeness might smooth the way ahead. Knowing it was his turn to be dispatched, the best he could hope for was as swift a death as the one Massetti had so thanklessly received.

When you can talk without losing a lung, I’ll let you go chase after hotties in your backless hospital gown. I’m sure the entire third floor would love to see yours and Victoria’s secrets.

Once upon a time Apache land would have stretched farther than the horizon, through New Mexico almost to Texas, but as white men found gold, silver, turquoise, and copper beneath its surface they carved up the territory like children sneaking to the fridge and slicing off a chocolate cake bit by bit: hoping at first that the loss wouldn’t be noticed but ultimately not really caring.

From the standpoint of integrity, I think we all need to own up to our dirty little secrets. I believe that when we are open about our own strange desires or unusual lives, it paves the way for others to do the same. In the past thirty years, gay men and lesbians took a lot of flack to tell the truth about their love lives and their courage opened the door for a mass migration out of the closet. We’re now at a moment in time when unconventional families (even thirty-year triads and gay couples) are losing their children in custody battles because their families don’t conform to mainstream ideas about what a family should be. Given this context, I want to be someone who stands up for my choices even if they’re unpopular, even if I get snickers at cocktail parties.

Human life is fragile: we live in the space between one breath and the next. We often try to maintain an illusion of permanence, through what we do, say, wear, buy, and how we enjoy ourselves and who and how we love. Yet it is an illusion that is constantly being undermined by change and death. We can use diamonds in whatever way we like. They are empty things, pretty as water, yet within them—if we want to see it—there is blood, dust, love, curses, and suffering. There is desire to make someone happy, there is admiration, there is ostentation…and there is a company’s profit curve.

You telling me there’s more in there? What is this place? A fuckin’ breeding farm for Victoria’s Secret? First Mae turns up, looking all kinds’a hot, then the big titted blond playmate, and now someone else?

Your grandfather were a quiet and secret man he had been ripped from his home in Tipperary and transported to the prisons of Van Diemen's Land I do not know what was done to him he never spoke of it. When they had finished with their tortures they set him free and he crossed the sea to the colony of Victoria. He were by this time 30 yr. of age red headed and freckled with his eyes always slitted against the sun. My da had sworn an oath to evermore avoid the attentions of the law so when he saw the streets of Melbourne was crawling with policemen worse than flies he walked 28 mi. to the township of Donnybrook and then or soon thereafter he seen my mother. Ellen Quinn were 18 yr. old she were dark haired and slender the prettiest figure on a horse he ever saw but your grandma was like a snare laid out by God for Red Kelly. She were a Quinn and the police would never leave the Quinns alone.

People twenty-five and up just sat around waiting to die. That was what I'd thought. So while I was waiting to die, I looked at bras. The last thing on my mind was comfort. It seemed to be the last thing on Victoria's Secret's mind, too.

Again, this week as I walked on Broadway, in front of giant photographs of voluptuous supermodels at a Victoria Secret mega-store, who was rebuilding the sidewalks? With sweaty headbands, ripped-up jeans, and dust on their brown faces? Their muscled hands quivered as they worked the jack-hammers and lugged the concrete chunks into dump trucks. Two men from Guanajuato. Undocumented workers. They both shook my hand vigorously, as if they were relieved I wasn’t an INS officer. I imagined how much money Victoria Secret was making off these poor bastards. I wondered why passersby didn’t see what was in front of their faces. We use these workers. We profit from them. In the shadows, they work to the bone, for pennies. And it’s so easy to blame them for everything and nothing simply because they are powerless, and dark-skinned,and speak with funny accents. Illegal is illegal. It is a phrase, shallow and cruel, that should prompt any decent American to burn with anger.

…in Pliny’s time, it was believed that only the blood of a newly sacrificed kid, or lamb, could shatter a diamond. Pliny wondered—as many did until the seventeenth century when this ‘fact’ was still being quoted as a gemological curiosity—how anyone could have thought to experiment with such a thing … He did not realize that the story was probably a metaphor, perhaps with the same root as the Christian symbol of the Lamb of God. A diamond is the hardest substance; a sacrificed lamb or goat the most innocent. The only way to overcome harshness and brutality, the imagery suggests, is with love.

She bit the inside of her cheek. “You wouldn’t keep secrets from me, would you? I mean we’ve been friends how long?” "We have been friends, thirteen years, eight months, two weeks, four days,” The wheelchair stopped and Ari watched the long shadow look at his watch. “Sixteen hours, four minutes and forty seven seconds and counting I’d say; give or take thirty minutes. Or if you want the short version: five thousand and four days plus or minus a few hours." She put her hands to her face and laughed to keep from crying. “Please tell me you made half of that up. Who actually keeps track of time like that?

All writers struggle at some point with the problem of balance between authority and involvement, seduction and revelation. Specifically, beginning writers wonder how much description to employ, and more advanced writers ask how much plot is too much or too little. And there is no better place to find answers than in the Victoria's Secret catalogue--or in any ad for lingerie--where the arts of seduction and revelation are so successfully practiced. After all, the secret of the effective lingerie ad is the secret of effective storytelling--to provide, moment by moment, the illusion of imminent expose, to give the viewer (read: reader) the uncanny sense that something fundamentally compelling is always just about to be revealed. Lingerie ads and storytelling balance the veiled and the unveiled, the seen and the unseen, the shown and the about-to-be-shown. In short, it is the art of the tease, the craft of selective 'coverage,' that, not just in lingerie but in storytelling, works to enthrall.

You look beautiful.” Lindsay giggles, checks Elody out in the rearview. “There are some bagels under your butt, beautiful.” “Mmm, butt bagels.” Elody reaches into the bag and pulls out a bagel, half squashed, then makes a big deal of taking an enormous bite out of it. “Tastes like Victoria’s Secret.” “Tastes like thong floss,” I say. “Tastes like crack,” Lindsay says. “Tastes like fart,” Elody says, and Lindsay spits coffee on the dashboard, and I start laughing and can’t stop, and all the way to school we’re thinking of flavors for butt bagels, and I’m thinking that this—my life, my friends—might be weird or screwy or imperfect or damaged or whatever, but it’s never seemed better to me.

The probable reason that nobody at Mikimoto wanted a writer to go to the pearl farms of Ago…was because something terrible was happening in that bay. Since the 1990s, pollution has been pouring into the water, partly as a result of careless husbandry but also from untreated sewage from all the hotels that bring people in to enjoy the ‘unspoiled wilderness’. No wonder the Japanese farmers were pulling out their oysters after just nine months: any longer than that and they risked losing most of their stock to the effluent in the water—it was killing the akoya oysters… Similar things are happening in Lake Biwa… Thanks to the pollution in the area, production at Lake Biwa has now declined almost to the point of nonexistence.

I squeezed through a horde of gum-snapping girls I recognized as seniors from my school. “He did not say that!” “Yes, he did! And you wouldn’t believe what she said!” Please, someone tell me I wouldn’t be that annoying if I had girlfriends. “Sure, you will be.” I whipped around and nearly got a faceful of cotton candy. I moved the purple sugar cloud to the side and glared at my mother. She wore a white, short-sleeved blouse and a patchwork skirt. “You have to stop listening in on my thoughts without my permission, Mom. It’s not cool.” She shoved a piece of cotton candy in my mouth to shut me up. “I didn’t do it on purpose, Clarity. I was strolling along listening in to the crowd.” “Pick up anything interesting?” “Actually, I did. That detective’s son can’t stop checking out your legs. He loves this little pink dress you’ve got on. So much so that he’s actually mad at himself for it.” She shook her head. I blushed. “Did you happen to pick up anything important?” “Like a man walking along thinking, ‘I killed Victoria Happel’?” “Exactly.” “No such luck. But dear, people don’t wander around thinking about their biggest secrets all the time. The killer could be standing right next to me and all I might pick up from him is how he wants to buy some barbequed chicken.” “Have you seen Billy Rawlinson or Frankie Creedon?” I asked. Distaste turned her mouth down. “No. Why are you looking for those scoundrels?” “Billy might be a witness in the case. Or a suspect.” “I’ll keep my eyes out and my mind open.” “Thanks,” I said. “Enjoy invading everyone’s privacy.

I have always tried to be all the tings my mother wanted me to be; ever the lady, always polite, never inconsiderate. I run my business the way my mother ran our house - everything just so. In some ways I am my mother - full of life when I'm happy, very cold when I'm angry. People say I look just like her. I'll tell you a secret: every time I pass a mirror, I gasp. I wonder if there's more here than meets the eye." - Karen, thirty-nine.

She'd heard more than a few of her friends and clients complain about their dead sex lives, citing disgruntled husbands, over-active children, and under-active libidos as major culprits. One of her best friends, Debbie Long, who was like the sister she never had, had recently confided that since the birth of her son seven years ago, her love life with her husband had dwindled to a state of near non-existence. "We're like rommmates," Debbie had told Victoria a few months ago. "We love each other but the passion is gone. We're just going through the motions. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time Rob and I made love," she'd complained.

Besides, you hate shopping.” “No, I don’t.” “It’s not like we’re only visiting one store. There’s going to be a lot of browsing around shoe stores and boutiques and going bag-hunting in the mall. You wouldn’t last five minutes in that jungle.” “Hey, I wear clothes, I’ve seen women’s clothes. I’m pretty sure I could cope in a mall.” “Trey, let me cast your mind back to the time when as a punishment for being a bastard I took you to Victoria’s Secret and tried on a load of lingerie for you, but then never bought any.” His pained expression made her smile. “You remember how you were sweating and huffing and puffing and asking how long before we could go home?” “That was because you’d just made me watch you model all kinds of kinky shit, got me hard as a rock, and then expected me to walk without being in agony.

Her brassiere's snaps are in the front. His own forehead snaps clear. He thinks to kneel. But he knows what she might think if he kneels. What cleared his forehead's lines was a type of revelation. Her breasts have come free. He imagines his wife and son. Her breasts are unconfined now. The bed's comforter has a tulle hem, like a ballerina's little hem. This is the younger sister of his wife's college roommate. Everyone else has gone to the mall, some to shop, some to see a movie at the mall's multiplex. The sister with breasts by the bed has a level gaze and a slight smile, slight and smoky, media-taught. She sees his color heighten and forehead go smooth in a kind of revelation--why she'd begged off the mall, the meaning of certain comments, looks, distended moments over the weekend he'd thought were his vanity, imagination. We see these things a dozen times a day in entertainment but imagine we ourselves, our own imaginations, are mad. A different man might have said what he'd seen was: Her hand moved to her bra and freed her breasts. His legs might slightly tremble when she asks what he thinks. Her expression is from Page 18 of the Victoria's Secret catalogue. She is, he thinks, the sort of woman who'd keep her heels on if he asked her to. Even if she'd never kept heels on before she'd give him a knowing, smoky smile, Page 18. In quick profile as she turns to close the door her breast is a half-globe at the bottom, a ski-jump curve above. Figure skaters have a tulle hem, as well. The languid half-turn and push at the door are tumid with some kind of significance; he realizes suddenly she's replaying a scene from some movie she loves. In his imagination's tableau his wife's hand is on his small son's shoulder in an almost fatherly way.

He could also be terrible romantic and thoughtful. My job was a real challenge. The work was difficult and the boss demanding: he thought nothing of calling or emailing at odd hours, even on the weekend; you ignored him at your peril. There was a point at which everything got to me. And it was exactly at that moment that Chris stepped in and planned a weekend getaway. He found a little cabin out in the woods where there was no cell phone reception-yes!-and without telling anyone, we made our getaway. Almost. I actually called the boss and told him my cell reception was giving out, and so I wouldn’t be able to check messages, something he expected even on the weekends. As soon as we got to the cabin, I headed to the bedroom. Inside, I opened my suitcase and changed into sexy white Victoria’s Secret-style lingerie, complete with corset and thigh-highs. Feeling a little shy and silly, I walked out and leaned against the doorway of the living room where he was sitting. “Hey!” “Yeah?” he mumbled from the couch, not bothering to look up from the magazine he was reading. “Turn around,” I said. He turned around-slowly at first. But as soon as he caught sight of me in that lingerie, he hopped clear over the couch and chased me down the hall to the bedroom. I squealed and giggled the whole way.

My bedroom is separated from the main body of my house so that I have to go outside and cross some pseudo-Japanese stepping stones in order to go to sleep at night. Often I get rained on a little bit on my way to bed. It’s a benediction. A good night kiss. Romantic? Absolutely. And nothing to be ashamed of. If reality is a matter of perspective, then the romantic view of the world is as valid as any other - and a great deal more rewarding. It makes of life and unpredictable adventure rather that a problematic equation. Rain is the natural element for romanticism. A dripping fir is a hundred times more sexy than a sunburnt palm tree, and more primal and contemplative, too. A steady, wind-driven rain composed music for the psyche. It not only nurtures and renews, it consecrates and sanctifies. It whispers in secret languages about the primordial essence of things. Obviously, then, the Pacific Northwest's customary climate is perfect for a writer. It's cozy and intimate. Reducing temptation (how can you possibly play on the beach or work in the yard?), it turns a person inward, connecting them with what Jung called "the bottom below the bottom," those areas of the deep unconscious into which every serious writer must spelunk. Directly above my writing desk there is a skylight. This is the window, rain-drummed and bough-brushed, through which my Muse arrives, bringing with her the rhythms and cadences of cloud and water, not to mention the latest catalog from Victoria's Secret and the twenty-three auxiliary verbs. Oddly enough, not every local author shares my proclivity for precipitation. Unaware of the poetry they're missing, many malign the mist as malevolently as they non-literary heliotropes do. They wring their damp mitts and fret about rot, cursing the prolonged spillage, claiming they're too dejected to write, that their feet itch (athlete's foot), the roof leaks, they can't stop coughing, and they feel as if they're slowly being digested by an oyster. Yet the next sunny day, though it may be weeks away, will trot out such a mountainous array of pagodas, vanilla sundaes, hero chins and god fingers; such a sunset palette of Jell-O, carrot oil, Vegas strip, and Kool-Aid; such a sea-vista display of broad waters, firred islands, whale spouts, and boat sails thicker than triangles in a geometry book, that any and all memories of dankness will fizz and implode in a blaze of bedazzled amnesia. "Paradise!" you'll hear them proclaim as they call United Van Lines to cancel their move to Arizona.

If you don't tell me why you're avoiding me, then, like, we might as well just get it over with and stop being friends." He stiffens and turns red, even visible in the dim light. It dawns on me that we're never going to be best friends again. "It's...," he says. "It is very difficult... for me... to be around you." "Why?" It take him a while to answer. He smooths his hair to one side, and rubs his eye, and checks that his collar isn't turned up, and scratches his knee. And then he starts to laugh. "You're so funny, Victoria." He shakes his head. "You're just so funny." At this, I get a sudden urge to punch him in the face. Instead, I descend into hysteria. "For fuck's sake! What are you talking about?!" I begin to shout, but you can't really tell over the noise of the crowd. "You're insane. I don't know why you're saying this to me. I don't know why you decided you wanted to become BFFs all over again, and now I don't know why you won't even look me in the eye. I don't understand anything you're doing or saying, and it's killing me, because I already don't understand anything about me or Michael or Becky or my brother or anything on this shitty planet. If you secretly hate me or something, you need to spit it out. I'm asking you to give me one straight answer, one single sentence that might sort at least something out in my head, but NO. You don't care, do you!? You don't give a SINGLE SHIT about my feelings, or anyone else's. You're just like everyone else." "You're wrong," he says. "You're wro-" "Everyone's got such dreadful problems." I shake my head wildly, holding on to it with both hands. "Even you. Even perfect innocent Lucas has problems." He's staring at me in a kind of terrified confusion, and it's absolutely hilarious. I start to crack up. "Maybe, like, everyone I know has problems. Like, there are no happy people. Nothing works out. Even if it's someone who you think is perfect. Like my brother!" I grin wildly at him. "My brother, my little brother, he's soooo perfect, but he's- he doesn't like food, like, he literally doesn't like food, or, I don't know, he loves it. He loves it so much that that it has to be perfect all the time, you know?" I grabbed Lucas by one shoulder again so he understands. "And then one day he gets so fed up with himself, like, he was annoyed, he hated how much he loves food, yeah, so he thought that it was better if there wasn't any food." I started laughing so much that my eyes water. "But that's so silly! Because you've got to eat food or you'll die, won't you? So my brother Charles, Charlie, he, he thought it would be better if he just got it over with then and there! So he, last year, he-" I hold up my wrist and point at it-"he hurt himself. And he wrote me this card, telling me he was really sorry and all, but I shouldn't be sad because he was actually really happy about it." I shake my head and laugh and laugh. "And you know what just makes me want to die? The fact that, like, all the time, I knew it was coming, but I didn't do anything. I didn't say anything to anyone about it, because I thought I'd been imagining it. Well, didn't I get a nice surprise when I walked into the bathroom that day?" There are tears running down my face. "And you know what's literally hilarious? The card had a picture of a cake on it!" He's not saying anything because he doesn't find anything hilarious, which strikes me as odd. He makes this pained sound and turns at a sharp right angle and strides away. I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes, and then I take that flyer out of my pocket and look at it, but the music has started again and 'm too cold and my brain doesn't seem to be processing anything. Only that goddamn picture of that goddamn cake.