Wearing Shades Quotes

Scars are not shameful, not unless you let them be. If you do not wear them, they will wear you.

It's much easier to wear your pain on the outside...

Sweet Jesus, you're wearing stockings."--Christian Grey

No hot guy should be allowed to have an English accent and drive a motorcycle. Not to mention wear the leather jacket or sport the cool shades. Hot guys should be forced into footie pajamas.

Your stepfather? I'd like to meet him." Oh no... why? "I'm not sure that's a good idea." Christian unlocks the door, his mouth in a grim line. "Are you ashamed of me?" "No!" It's my turn to sound exasperated. "Introduce you to my dad as what? 'This is the man who deflowered me and wants to start a BDSM relationship'. You're not wearing running shoes.

Oh, my. What a lovely shade of bitch you're wearing today. --T-SHIRT

Whoa. I’ve never heard him sing, not even in the shower, ever. I frown. He has a lovely voice—of course. Hmm . . . has he heard me sing? He wouldn’t be asking you to marry him if he had! My subconscious has her arms crossed and is wearing Burberry check . . . jeez.

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

Kell has only two faces. The one he wears for the world at large, and the one he wears for those he loves.” He sipped his wine. “For us.” Lila’s expression hardened. “Whatever he feels for me, it isn’t love.” “Because it isn’t soft and sweet and doting?” Rhy rocked back, stretching against the pillar. “Do you know how many times he’s nearly beat me senseless out of love? How many times I’ve done the same? I’ve seen the way he looks at those he hates …” He shook his head. “There are very few things my brother cares about, and even fewer people.

I turn and gaze at him midway. Chin up Steele, I chide myself. “Oh... by the way, I’m wearing your underwear.” I gave him a small smile and pull up the waistband of the boxer briefs I’m wearing so he can see. Christian’s mouth drops open, shocked. What a great reaction. My mood shifts immediately, and I sashay into the house, part of me wanting to jump and punch the air.

She'd wear shades of lipstick you'd expect to see around the base of a penis.

I glance down his body. He's still wearing his shorts and his shirt, and I still have my T-shirt on. Jeez-- talk about wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

What?” She flushed the prettiest shade of pink. “You didn’t bring me any undies. And honestly, I’m not wearing anyone else’s.” My hands slid up her calves. “I have absolutely no problem with that. Whatsoever. Like, ever. And ever. Forever. You get me?

Hi, Max," she said, pushing her shades up onto her curls. "I hope your wearing sunscreen," i said, “your gonna have hella wrinkles by the time your ten.” “Want some daiquiri?” she offered, pointing at a blender. “Is it traitor flavored?” I asked.

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- - This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be otherwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see thus, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

What kind of a dork uses a lame stage name anyway? And why Shade? Because he wears sunglasses all the time?" "Yeah, he has to wear them. He has vision problems.." Melanie's stomach dropped and she covered her big, blabbering mouth with one hand. "He does? Shit. Now I feel bad." The guy chuckled. "I'm just fucking with you. He wears them because he enjoys looking like a douche twenty-four seven.

Dear Max - You looked so beautiful today. I'm going to remember what you looked like forever. ... And I hope you remember me the same way - clean, ha-ha. I'm glad our last time together was happy. But I'm leaving tonight, leaving the flock, and this time it's for good. I don't know if I'll ever see any of you again. The thing is, Max, that everyone is a little bit right. Added up all together, it makes this one big right. Dylan's a little bit right about how my being here might be putting the rest of you in danger. The threat might have been just about Dr. Hans, but we don't know that for sure. Angel is a little bit right about how splitting up the flock will help all of us survive. And the rest of the flock is a little bit right about how when you and I are together, we're focused on each other - we can't help it. The thing is, Maximum, I love you. I can't help but be focused on you when we're together. If you're in the room, I want to be next to you. If you're gone, I think about you. You're the one who I want to talk to. In a fight, I want you at my back. When we're together, the sun is shining. When we're apart, everything is in shades of gray. I hope you'll forgive me someday for turning our worlds into shades of gray - at least for a while. ... You're not at your best when you're focused on me. I mean, you're at your best Maxness, but not your best leaderness. I mostly need Maxness. The flock mostly needs leaderness. And Angel, if you're listening to this, it ain't you, sweetie. Not yet. ... At least for a couple more years, the flock needs a leader to survive, no matter how capable everyone thinks he or she is. The truth is that they do need a leader, and the truth is that you are the best leader. It's one of the things I love about you. But the more I thought about it, the more sure I got that this is the right thing to do. Maybe not for you, or for me, but for all of us together, our flock. Please don't try to find me. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, besides wearing that suit today, and seeing you again will only make it harder. You'd ask me to come back, and I would, because I can't say no to you. But all the same problems would still be there, and I'd end up leaving again, and then we'd have to go through this all over again. Please make us only go through this once. ... I love you. I love your smile, your snarl, your grin, your face when you're sleeping. I love your hair streaming out behind you as we fly, with the sunlight making it shine, if it doesn't have too much mud or blood in it. I love seeing your wings spreading out, white and brown and tan and speckled, and the tiny, downy feathers right at the top of your shoulders. I love your eyes, whether they're cold or calculating or suspicious or laughing or warm, like when you look at me. ... You're the best warrior I know, the best leader. You're the most comforting mom we've ever had. You're the biggest goofball, the worst driver, and a truly lousy cook. You've kept us safe and provided for us, in good times and bad. You're my best friend, my first and only love, and the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, with wings or without. ... Tell you what, sweetie: If in twenty years we haven't expired yet, and the world is still more or less in one piece, I'll meet you at the top of that cliff where we first met the hawks and learned to fly with them. You know the one. Twenty years from today, if I'm alive, I'll be there, waiting for you. You can bet on it. Good-bye, my love. Fang P.S. Tell everyone I sure will miss them

.... I may need you to accompany me to functions, and I want you dressed well. I'm sure your salary, when you do get a job, won't cover the kind of clothes I'd like you to wear." "I don't have to wear them when I'm not with you?" "No." "Okay." Think of them as uniform.

We’ve both read the same books, so I know direct sunlight is harmful for babies. Whenever I take Jamie out, I make sure she’s wearing her hat and is hidden safely beneath the stroller’s shade screen. I pretty much treat her like she’s a vampire.

Fashion Fact: Most people make the assumption that I wear trendy shades the majority of the time (often indoors) to protect my eyes from the elements. But in fact it's the reverse. I'm protecting the elements from the brilliance of my eyes.

Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee. Beezy3: Packing. Do you have my purple sock with the heart on the ankle? Carmabelle: No. Like I'd wear your socks. Carmen looked from her computer screen down to her feet. To her dismay, her socks were two faintly different shades of purple. She rotated her foot to get a view of her anklebone. Carmabelle: Ahem. Might possibly have sock.

Oh, my. What a lovely shade of bitch you’re wearing today.

17 Oh, my. What a lovely shade of bitch you’re wearing today. —T-SHIRT

I am glad that it is old and big. I myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century. I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old times. We Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may be amongst the common dead. I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am no longer young; and my heart, through wearing years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken; the shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may.

Guys like him really shouldn’t be allowed on motorcycles. They should have to bounce around on pogo sticks, or better: Hippity Hops. And no hot guy should be allowed to have an English accent and drive a motorcycle. Not to mention wear the leather jacket or sport the cool shades. Hot guys should be forced into footie pajamas.

Oh, my. What a lovely shade of bitch you’re wearing today. —T-SHIRT

I dumped out the bag and found what had been inside was a bunched-up police uniform, complete with the vest. "Where did you get this?" Boo asked. "It's Callum's," he said. "What's he wearing?" "At the moment, not much of anything. Put it on." I noticed Book perk up a bit at this piece of information.

If you call yourself an "authoress" on your Facebook profile, you suck at life. You are stupid and your children are ugly. It doesn't matter if you're just trying to be cute and original. You're not. You are about as original as all those other witless twits "writing" the one millionth shitty Fifty Shades clone. Or maybe you're trying to show your 2000 fake Facebook "friends" that you are an empowered feminist who will not stand for sexist terminology. But you're not showing people that you are fighting the good fight, you're showing people that you are a sheep, who's trying just a little too hard to ride the current wave of idiotic political correctness. The word "author" is no more gender-discrimination than the word "person." Do you call yourself a personess? No, of course not, because then you might as well wear a sign around your neck that says, "Hello, I'm a retard.

My mom says, "Do you know what the AIDS memorial quilt is all about?" Jump to how much I hate my brother at this moment. I bought this fabric because I thought it would make a nice panel for Shane," Mom says. "We just ran into some problems with what to sew on it." Give me amnesia. Flash. Give me new parents. Flash. Your mother didn't want to step on any toes," Dad says. He twists a drumstick off and starts scraping the meat onto a plate. "With gay stuff you have to be so careful since everything means something in secret code. I mean, we didn't want to give people the wrong idea." My Mom leans over to scoop yams onto my plate, and says, "Your father wanted a black border, but black on a field of blue would mean Shane was excited by leather sex, you know, bondage and discipline, sado and masochism." She says, "Really, those panels are to help the people left behind." Strangers are going to see us and see Shane's name," my dad says. "We didn't want them thinking things." The dishes all start their slow clockwise march around the table. The stuffing. The olives. The cranberry sauce. "I wanted pink triangles but all the panels have pink triangles," my mom says. "It's the Nazi symbol for homosexuals." She says,"Your father suggested black triangles, but that would mean Shane was a lesbian. It looks like female pubic hair. The black triangle does." My father says, "Then I wanted a green border, but it turns out that would mean Shane was a male prostitute." My mom says, "We almost chose a red border, but that would mean fisting. Brown would mean either scat or rimming, we couldn't figure which." Yellow," my father says, "means watersports." A lighter shade of blue," Mom says, "would mean just regular oral sex." Regular white," my father says, "would mean anal. White could also mean Shane was excited by men wearing underwear." He says, "I can't remember which." My mother passes me the quilted chicken with the rolls still warm inside. We're supposed to sit and eat with Shane dead all over the table in front of us. Finally we just gave up," my mom says, "and I made a nice tablecloth out of the material." Between the yams and the stuffing, Dad looks down at his plate and says, "Do you know about rimming?" I know it isn't table talk. And fisting?" my mom asks. I say, I know. I don't mention Manus and his vocational porno magazines. We sit there, all of us around a blue shroud with the turkey more like a big dead baked animal than ever, the stuffing chock full of organs you can still recognize, the heart and gizzard and liver, the gravy thick with cooked fat and blood. The flower centerpiece could be a casket spray. Would you pass the butter, please?" my mother says. To my father she says, "Do you know what felching is?

It’s traumatizing to think that a best friend could become just a friend. That’s because there is virtually no difference between an acquaintance and a friend. But the gulf between a friend and a best friend is enormous and profound. And if I look at it that way, I think I can see the value of a wedding. If you’re my best friend and the only way I get to have dinner with you is by traveling thousands of miles, selecting a chicken or fish option, and wearing a dress in the same shade of lavender as six other girls, I will do that.

What is this, master - the third time I've broken you out of a jail cell?” Nathaniel coughed. “Minor misunderstandings, on both previous occasions,” he assured Elisabeth. (....) He spoke mildly, his lashes shading his eyes. “At least you're wearing clothes this time, master.” “I'll have you know,” Nathaniel said, “that that was an accident, and the public certainly didn't mind. One woman even sent me flowers.” To Elisabeth, he added, “Don't worry. She was forty years old, and her name was Mildred.

The lipstick is a dark, dark red. The kind Hollywood stars wear. Not a shade good girls in Davisburg wear to the movies. I try it on anyway and gaze at my reflection in the mirror. I don't look sick. I certainly don't look like that kind of girl. What does that kind of girl look like, anyway?

Life was about to take her away from here. Fro the place where she'd become herself. This sold little village that never changed but helped its inhabitants to change. She's arrived straight from art college full of avant-garde ideas, wearing shades of gray and seeing the world in black and white. So sure of herself. But here, in the middle of nowhere, she'd discovered color. And nuance. She'd learned this from the villagers, who'd been generous enough to lend her their souls to paint. Not as perfect human beings, but as flawed, struggling men and women. Filled with fear and uncertainty and, in at least one case, martinis.

He was wearing brown leather trousers, a darker brown leather vest, and a silk shirt that matched my dress. The sleeves were almost piratical in style, and the collar was unlaced. His boots were the same shade as his vest, a few shades lighter than his hair. "Uh," I said again, before managing. "Weren't you wearing that the last time you came to Court?" "She always dresses me in some variation of this attire," said Tybalt. "I can't tell whether she likes the look of it, or whether she's trying to make a point. This would have been a stagehand's garb, once upon a time, and nothing suited for a King." "Uh," I said for a third time. Seeing my distress, Tybalt smirked, leaned in, and murmured in my ear, "I have a disturbing assortment of leather trousers, thanks to her. I'd be happy to show you, if you like.

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn red or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Sander suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant. She is always carrying bags of clothes, bouquets of roses, take-out Chinese containers, or bagels. Museum tags fill her pockets and purses, along with perfume samples and invitations to art gallery openings. When she is walking to work, to ward off bums or psychos, her face resembles the Statue of Liberty, but at home in her candlelit, dove-colored apartment, the stony look fades away and she smiles like the sterling roses she has brought for herself to make up for the fact that she is single and her feet are sore.

The best part, without any question, was the tie. I’ve always liked ties, but it seemed like too much of a Statement to wear them.

No,” I hear myself say. “You’re not supposed to be here.” She’s sitting on my bed. She’s leaning back on her elbows, legs outstretched in front of her, crossed at the ankles. And while some part of me understands I must be dreaming, there’s another, overwhelmingly dominant part of me that refuses to accept this. Part of me wants to believe she’s really here, inches away from me, wearing this short, tight black dress that keeps slipping up her thighs. But everything about her looks different, oddly vibrant; the colors are all wrong. Her lips are a richer, deeper shade of pink; her eyes seem wider, darker. She’s wearing shoes I know she’d never wear. And strangest of all: she’s smiling at me. “Hi,” she whispers. It’s just one word, but my heart is already racing. I’m inching away from her, stumbling back and nearly slamming my skull against the headboard, when I realize my shoulder is no longer wounded. I look down at myself. My arms are both fully functional. I’m wearing nothing but a white T-shirt and my underwear. She shifts positions in an instant, propping herself up on her knees before crawling over to me. She climbs onto my lap. She’s now straddling my waist. I’m suddenly breathing too fast. Her lips are at my ear. Her words are so soft. “Kiss me,” she says. “Juliette—” “I came all the way here.” She’s still smiling at me. It’s a rare smile, the kind she’s never honored me with. But somehow, right now, she’s mine. She’s mine and she’s perfect and she wants me, and I’m not going to fight it. I don’t want to. Her hands are tugging at my shirt, pulling it up over my head. Tossing it to the floor. She leans forward and kisses my neck, just once, so slowly. My eyes fall closed. There aren’t enough words in this world to describe what I’m feeling. I feel her hands move down my chest, my stomach; her fingers run along the edge of my underwear. Her hair falls forward, grazing my skin, and I have to clench my fists to keep from pinning her to my bed. Every nerve ending in my body is awake. I’ve never felt so alive or so desperate in my life, and I’m sure if she could hear what I’m thinking right now, she’d run out the door and never come back. Because I want her. Now. Here. Everywhere. I want nothing between us. I want her clothes off and the lights on and I want to study her. I want to unzip her out of this dress and take my time with every inch of her. I can’t help my need to just stare; to know her and her features: the slope of her nose, the curve of her lips, the line of her jaw. I want to run my fingertips across the soft skin of her neck and trace it all the way down. I want to feel the weight of her pressed against me, wrapped around me. I can’t remember a reason why this can’t be right or real. I can’t focus on anything but the fact that she’s sitting on my lap, touching my chest, staring into my eyes like she might really love me. I wonder if I’ve actually died. But just as I lean in, she leans back, grinning before reaching behind her, never once breaking eye contact with me. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “It’s almost over now.” Her words seem so strange, so familiar. “What do you mean?” “Just a little longer and I’ll leave.” “No.” I’m blinking fast, reaching for her. “No, don’t go—where are you going—” “You’ll be all right,” she says. “I promise.” “No—” But now she’s holding a gun. And pointing it at my heart.

No!” It’s my turn to sound exasperated. “Introduce you to my dad as what? ‘This is the man who deflowered me and wants us to start a BDSM relationship’? You’re not wearing running shoes.

It was called ‘We Wear the Mask’, by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I transcribed the first stanza and then started jotting down my reaction to it. We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. I used to wear masks so subtle I barely noticed them. A compliment to my mother after a dismal meal, a smile at my best friend when she sang out of tune, a forced laugh at my uncle’s bad jokes. I wore small masks that came and went, like fleeting expressions. I am stuck inside the mask I wear now. I want to rip it off. I want to show my scars to the world, to unveil the ugliness that breathes inside me. I want to be unashamed. I want to be unafraid. But every day the mask gets tighter, and I suffocate a little more. I stopped writing.

We wear the mask that grins and lies. It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes. This debt we pay to human guile With torn and bleeding hearts… We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties. Why should the world think otherwise In counting all our tears and sighs. Nay let them only see us while We wear the mask.

Maria gave her a scrutinizing look. “Do you wear any other color besides black?” Looking down at her black leggings and oversized dark gray sweater, she gave her own scrutinizing look. “This is dark gray.” Maria rolled her eyes. “That is one shade away from black, and you know it.” “No, it’s not.” It’s more like a shade and a half.

But, my dear boy, you don’t eat or drink the law, or sit in the shade of it or warm yourself by it, or wear it, or have your being in it. The law exists only to serve.

Scars are not shameful,” said Ojka, “not unless you let them be.” The knight straightened. “If you do not wear them, they will wear you.” And with that, she’d walked away.

Thus we braid Strand 6 to Strand 9, and our glorious crystal future shines so bright I gotta wear shades, as the prophets say.

Belief systems are just glasses of different shades that we wear on our inner eye.

Man, you have to admit, your future’s so bright, we don’t have to wear shades. Just rainsuits . . .

Astrid Dane. . . Her long colorless hair was woven back into a braid, and her porcelain skin bled straight into the edges of her tunic. Her entire outfit was fitted to her like armor; the collar of her shirt was high and rigid, guarding her throat, and the tunic itself ran from chin to wrist to waist, less out of a sense of modesty, Kell was sure, than protection. Below a gleaming silver belt, she wore fitted pants that tapered into tall boots (rumor had it that a man once spat at her for refusing to wear a dress; she’d cut off his lips). The only bits of color were the pale blue of her eyes and the greens and reds of the talismans that hung from her neck and wrists and were threaded through her hair. . . “I smell something sweet,” she said. She’d been gazing up at the ceiling. Now her eyes wandered down and landed on Kell. “Hello, flower boy.

There’s nothing to be scared of.” Instead of taking Charlie’s pulse – there was really no point – he took one of the old man’s hands in his. He saw Charlie’s wife pulling down a shade in the bedroom, wearing nothing but the slip of Belgian lace he’d bought her for their first anniversary; saw how the ponytail swung over one shoulder when she turned to look at him, her face lit in a smile that was all yes. He saw a Farmall tractor with a striped umbrella raised over the seat. He smelled bacon and heard Frank Sinatra singing ‘Come Fly with Me’ from a cracked Motorola radio sitting on a worktable littered with tools. He saw a hubcap full of rain reflecting a red barn. He tasted blueberries and gutted a deer and fished in some distant lake whose surface was dappled by steady autumn rain. He was sixty, dancing with his wife in the American Legion hall. He was thirty, splitting wood. He was five, wearing shorts and pulling a red wagon. Then the pictures blurred together, the way cards do when they’re shuffled in the hands of an expert, and the wind was blowing big snow down from the mountains, and in here was the silence and Azzie’s solemn watching eyes.

How do you know when the Sarows is coming?" hummed Lila as she made her way down the ship's narrow hall, fingertips skimming either wall for balance. Right about the, Alucard's warning about Jasta was coming back in full force. "Never challenge that one to a drinking contest. Or a sword fight. Or anything else you might lose. Because you will." The boat rocked beneath her fee. Or maybe she was the one rocking. Hell. Lila was slight, but not short of practice, and even so, she'd never had so much trouble holding her liquor. When she got to her room, she found Kell hunched over the Inheritor, examining the markings on its side. "Hello, handsome," she said, bracing herself in the doorway. Kell looked up, a smile halfway to his lips before it fell away. "You're drunk," he said, giver her a long, appraising look. "And you're not wearing any shoes." "Your powers of observation are astonishing." Lila looked down at her bare feet. "I lost them." "How do you lose shoes?" Lila crinkled her brow. "I bet them. I lost." Kell rose. "To who?" A tiny hiccup. "Jasta." Kell sighed. "Stay here." He slipped past her into the hall, a hand alighting on her waist and then, too soon, the touch was gone. Lila make her way to the bed and collapsed onto it, scooping up the discarded Inheritor and holding it up to the light. The spindle at the cylinder's base was sharp enough to cut, and she turned the device carefully between her fingers, squinting to make out the words wrapped around it. Rosin, read one side. Cason, read the other. Lila frowned, mouthing the words as Kell reappeared in the doorway. "Give-- and Take," he translated, tossing her the boots. She sat up too fast, winced. "How did you manage that?" "I simply explained that she couldn't have them-- they wouldn't have fit-- and then I gave her mine." Lila looked down at Kell's bare feet, and burst into laughter.

DAYS WENT BY, and weeks. Jonas learned, through the memories, the names of colors; and now he began to see them all, in his ordinary life (though he knew it was ordinary no longer, and would never be again). But they didn’t last. There would be a glimpse of green—the landscaped lawn around the Central Plaza; a bush on the riverbank. The bright orange of pumpkins being trucked in from the agricultural fields beyond the community boundary—seen in an instant, the flash of brilliant color, but gone again, returning to their flat and hueless shade. The Giver told him that it would be a very long time before he had the colors to keep. “But I want them!” Jonas said angrily. “It isn’t fair that nothing has color!” “Not fair?” The Giver looked at Jonas curiously. “Explain what you mean.” “Well . . .” Jonas had to stop and think it through. “If everything’s the same, then there aren’t any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things! A blue tunic, or a red one?” He looked down at himself, at the colorless fabric of his clothing. “But it’s all the same, always.” Then he laughed a little. “I know it’s not important, what you wear. It doesn’t matter. But—” “It’s the choosing that’s important, isn’t it?” The Giver asked him. Jonas nodded.

In Port William, more than anyplace else I had been, this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I don’t think anybody believed it. I still don’t think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they had signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish.

ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

The gym exposes deficiencies in our bodies’ strength and stamina—and appearance. You can wear all kinds of daytime clothes that hide or minimize aspects of your body that you would like to be less visible to the eye. But in the gym, you cannot hide them. There you and your coach (and unfortunately everyone around you) can see where you bulge where you shouldn’t. It’s an incentive to get to work. And so this metaphor tells us that when life is going along just fine, the flaws in our character can be masked and hidden from others and from ourselves. But when troubles and difficulties hit, we are suddenly in “God’s gymnasium”—we are exposed. Our inner anxieties, our hair-trigger temper, our unrealistic regard of our own talents, our tendency to lie or shade the truth, our lack of self-discipline—all of these things come out.

I watch him, enthralled as slowly, like the predator he is, he stalks me in time to the slow sultry beat of the music. He's barefoot, wearing just an untucked white shirt, jeans, and a smoldering look. Nina sings "You're mine" as Christian reaches me, his intention clear.

Nothing grows among its pinnacles; there is no shade except under great toadstools of sandstone whose bases have been eaten to the shape of wine glasses by the wind. Everything is flaking, cracking, disintegrating, wearing away in the long, inperceptible weather of time. The ash of ancient volcanic outbursts still sterilizes its soil, and its colors in that waste are the colors that flame in the lonely sunsets on dead planets.

Do that thing you always wanted to do “someday” in the future: get on a plane in your Jackie O shift dress and shades, take a train across Europe wearing red lipstick, buy that sporty two-seater car, spend your money on perfume. Otherwise you might wake up one day with a husband and kids and wonder what you did with all that free time you once had. And if you’re already experiencing the domestic bliss of family life, savour every moment.

Do you always wear Malaysian imitations of Brooks Brothers blue oxford button-downs, Mr. Laney?" Laney had looked down at his shirt, or tried to. "Malaysia?" "The stitch-count's dead on, but they still haven't mastered the thread-tension." "Oh." "Never mind. A little prototypic nerd chic could actually lend a certain frisson, around here. You could lose the tie, though. Definitely lose the tie. And keep a collection of felt-tipped pens in your pocket. Unchewed, please. Plus one of those fat flat highlighters, in a really nasty fluorescent shade." "Are you joking?" "Probably, Mr. Laney. May I call you Colin?" "Yes." She never did call him "Colin," then or ever. "You'll find that humor is essential at Slitscan, Laney. A necessary survival tool. You'll find the type that's most viable here is fairly oblique." "How do you mean, Ms. Torrance?" "Kathy. I mean difficult to quote effectively in a memo. Or a court of law.

California, Labor Day weekend...early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Fricso, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur...The Menace is loose again, the Hell's Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by inches...like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter's leg with no quarter asked and non given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they'll never know...Ah, these righteous dudes, they love to screw it on...Little Jesus, the Gimp, Chocolate George, Buzzard, Zorro, Hambone, Clean Cut, Tiny, Terry the Tramp, Frenchy, Mouldy Marvin, Mother Miles, Dirty Ed, Chuck the Duck, Fat Freddy, Filthy Phil, Charger Charley the Child Molester, Crazy Cross, Puff, Magoo, Animal and at least a hundred more...tense for the action, long hair in the wind, beards and bandanas flapping, earrings, armpits, chain whips, swastikas and stripped-down Harleys flashing chrome as traffic on 101 moves over, nervous, to let the formation pass like a burst of dirty thunder...

Lady Sarah steps in, wearing her nightclothes under a fluffy ivory robe and a chastising expression. Behind her glasses, her eyes narrow on Henry. “So this is how it’s going to be, then? Married only a few days and I already have to search the palace to drag my husband to bed?” Henry goes to Sarah, like an invisible rope is reeling him to her. “Dragging me to your bed is something you’ll never have to do, love. You can even tie me there whenever you like, and I’ll be happy to reciprocate.” He kisses her mouth, as she blushes deep and bright. She leans back. “Then why are you down here instead of up there with me?” “There was an emergency.” “What kind of an emergency?” “You’re not going to believe it.” “Try me.” “Logan and Ellie are fucking.” She automatically glances at me, and her cheeks deepen to a shade of crimson. “I’m sure there’s a more delicate way to word that, Henry.” Henry nods, soberly. “You’re right, I’m sorry. Let me try again: Logan and Ellie are humping, like insatiable randy bunnies, all over the palace.” Sarah shakes her head. “You’re hopeless.” The Prince grins broadly. “It’s part of my charm.” “What am I going to do with you?” Henry kisses her again. “Take me to bed. Obviously.

The boat is tied to shore. There aren't any oars in place. She isn't going anywhere. She wears a summer dress and a garden hat. Somebody has persuaded her to pose in the boat, with water around her and dappled with shade. She is laughing. She has just been married, or is about to be married. She will never be happier. She will never be more beautiful.

Once, she came face-to-face with a heavyset man wearing a hooded short cloak. They came level with each other under one of the infrequent lanterns and she could make out only the lower half of his face. The upper half was shaded by the hood. She had an impression of a dark, full beard. In the shadow of his hood, his eyes were unblinking, staring at her.

You're not wearing running shoes.

I had started on the marriage and motherhood beat by accident with a post on my personal, read only by friends, blog called ‘Fifty Shades of Men’. I had written it after buying Fifty Shades of Grey to spice up what Dave and I half-jokingly called our grown up time, and had written a meditation on how the sex wasn’t the sexiest part of the book. “Dear publishers, I will tell you why every woman with a ring on her finger and a car seat in her SUV is devouring this book like the candy she won’t let herself eat.” I had written. “It’s not the fantasy of an impossibly handsome guy who can give you an orgasm just by stroking your nipples. It is instead the fantasy of a guy who can give you everything. Hapless, clueless, barely able to remain upright without assistance, Ana Steele is that unlikeliest of creatures, a college student who doesn’t have an email address, a computer, or a clue. Turns out she doesn’t need any of those things. Here is the dominant Christian Grey and he’ll give her that computer plus an iPad, a beamer, a job, and an identity, sexual and otherwise. No more worrying about what to wear. Christian buys her clothes. No more stress about how to be in the bedroom. Christian makes those decisions. For women who do too much—which includes, dear publishers, pretty much all the women who have enough disposable income to buy your books—this is the ultimate fantasy: not a man who will make you come, but a man who will make agency unnecessary, a man who will choose your adventure for you.

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry— Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there’s a story in a book about it: Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest, The chisel work of an enormous Glacier That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole. You must not mind a certain coolness from him Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain. Nor need you mind the serial ordeal Of being watched from forty cellar holes As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins. As for the woods’ excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees. Make yourself up a cheering song of how Someone’s road home from work this once was, Who may be just ahead of you on foot Or creaking with a buggy load of grain. The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you’re lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me. Then make yourself at home. The only field Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall. First there’s the children’s house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house that is no more a house, But only a belilaced cellar hole, Now slowly closing like a dent in dough. This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny’s A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.) I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it, So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t. (I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Right now, all white people are either wearing or coveting a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. These sunglasses are so popular now that you cannot swing a canvas bag at a farmer's market without hitting a pair. In fact, at outdoor gatherings you should count the number of Wayfarers so you can determine exactly how white the event is. If you see no Wayfarers you are either at a country music concert or you are indoors.

I know you prefer the other wedding dress but didn’t wear it, because you want it to stay ours. I know you hate that we’re dancing in front of a crowd right now. I know you’re hoping a storm will interrupt the ceremony, so it can all be over.” He leaned in even farther. “I know you have nightmares every night, and it kills me—kills me—that I’m not there to hold you through them, the way I was before. So, instead I send whatever I can. Your favorite foods. Your favorite flowers. I know you’ve killed dozens of people who should have rotted in our prisons long ago, and I know why you do it. To keep the beast within at bay. To funnel your anger and skills into something that maybe looks sort of like good.” Her breath hiked. How could he know that? He must have felt her jolt of surprise, because he pressed his forehead to hers. “I know that, because you and me, we are the same shade, Hearteater. I knew it the day you stabbed me through the chest while our lips were still locked. I knew it when you looked at me with such hatred, such fury, but never fear . . . not even knowing who I was, and what I had done.” His lips brushed across her cheek. She wasn’t sure she was breathing. “I knew it when you gave up your life for mine, because for you . . . only for you . . . I would do the same.

The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene, I do it in private and nobody sees but the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you: women should not contemplate war, should not weigh tactics impartially, or evade the word enemy, or view both sides and denounce nothing. Women should march for peace, or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery, spit themselves on bayonets to protect their babies, whose skulls will be split anyway, or,having been raped repeatedly, hang themselves with their own hair. There are the functions that inspire general comfort. That, and the knitting of socks for the troops and a sort of moral cheerleading. Also: mourning the dead. Sons,lovers and so forth. All the killed children. Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. In my dreams there is glamour. The Vikings leave their fields each year for a few months of killing and plunder, much as the boys go hunting. In real life they were farmers. The come back loaded with splendour. The Arabs ride against Crusaders with scimitars that could sever silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse's neck and a hunk of armour crashes down like a tower. Fire against metal. A poet might say: romance against banality. When awake, I know better. Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters, or none that could be finally buried. Finish one off, and circumstances and the radio create another. Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently to God all night and meant it, and been slaughtered anyway. Brutality wins frequently, and large outcomes have turned on the invention of a mechanical device, viz. radar. True, valour sometimes counts for something, as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right - though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition, is decided by the winner. Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags of guts to save their comrades. I can admire that. But rats and cholera have won many wars. Those, and potatoes, or the absence of them. It's no use pinning all those medals across the chests of the dead. Impressive, but I know too much. Grand exploits merely depress me. In the interests of research I have walked on many battlefields that once were liquid with pulped men's bodies and spangled with exploded shells and splayed bone. All of them have been green again by the time I got there. Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day. Sad marble angels brood like hens over the grassy nests where nothing hatches. (The angels could just as well be described as vulgar or pitiless, depending on camera angle.) The word glory figures a lot on gateways. Of course I pick a flower or two from each, and press it in the hotel Bible for a souvenir. I'm just as human as you. But it's no use asking me for a final statement. As I say, I deal in tactics. Also statistics: for every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.

Once my father told me: When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end. Darkness fell. Rain fell. I never asked: What question? And now it's too late. Because I lost you, Tateh. One day, in the spring of 1938, on a rainy day that gave way to a break in the clouds, I lost you. You'd gone out to collect specimens for a theory you were hatching about rainfall, instinct, and butterflies. And then you were gone. We found you lying under a tree, your face splashed with mud. We knew you were free then, unbound by disappointing results. And we buried you in the cemetery where your father was buried, and his father, under the shade of the chestnut tree. Three years later, I lost Mameh. The last time I saw her she was wearing her yellow apron. She was stuffing things in a suitcase, the house was a wreck. She told me to go into the woods. She'd packed me food, and told me to wear my coat, even though it was July. "Go," she said. I was too old to listen, but like a child I listened. She told me she'd follow the next day. We chose a spot we both knew in the woods. The giant walnut tree you used to like, Tateh, because you said it had human qualities. I didn't bother to say goodbye. I chose to believe what was easier. I waited. But. She never came. Since then I've lived with the guilt of understanding too late that she thought she would have been a burden to me. I lost Fitzy. He was studying in Vilna, Tateh—someone who knew someone told me he'd last been seen on a train. I lost Sari and Hanna to the dogs. I lost Herschel to the rain. I lost Josef to a crack in time. I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes, I'd taken them off to sleep, the shoes Herschel gave me, and when I woke they were gone, I walked barefoot for days and then I broke down and stole someone else's. I lost the only woman I ever wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way, without my knowing it, I didn't also lose my mind?

He [Logan] wasn't wearing his baseball cap for once, and the day was bright, almost warm, so his face was bathed in a soft glow from the winter sun. Logan's normally shaded eyes looked a much lighter brown in the sun, and they crinkled up at the corners as he gave me an easy smile. Are you deliberately screwing with me, sun? What's next? Is his smile going to sparkle as a bell-like “ding” chimes in the distance? Is a butterfly going to land on his shoulder? Give the boy a white horse and it's a wrap for poor Paige's heart.

E L James, Party Games you’re looking kind of smug inserting that god damn anal plug giving me your kinky love after writing Fifty Shades you’re acting like some kind of renegade giving me your kinky love sit me on a dildo and spin me right around chain me up and hang me upside down giving me your kinky love god damn you E L James making me into some kind of party game giving me your kinky love put me in a dream and wheel in the Fucking Machine god damn you E L James spank a hand on my bum see how much I can cum god damn you E L James stand me up and sit me down lay me out and roll me about god damn you E L James BDSM electro impulses up my brainstem god damn you E L James cast me in a submissive role-play with my genitals on display god damn you E L James suspend me high in the air slap me around like I don’t care god damn you E L James take that whip off the shelf make me forget myself god damn you E L James Why are you wearing oven mittens? branding iron your name written inner goddess don’t keep in hidden god damn you E L James holy crap my mind has snapped to forget one thing that I have heard I’m never going to use the safe-word god damn you E L James By R.M.Romarney

That afternoon she was wearing a yellow dress the same shade as her hair, and again his throat tightened when he saw her, and again he could not speak. But when the first moment passed and words came, it was all right, and their thoughts flowed together like two effervescent brooks and coursed gaily through the arroyo of the afternoon. This time when they parted, it was she who asked, "Will you be here tomorrow?"—though only because she stole the question from his lips—and the words sang in his ears all the way back through the woods to the cabin and lulled him to sleep after an evening spent with his pipe on the porch.

Brushing through my hair was usually bad enough after a shower. Letting it dry without brushing it was a terrible mistake. It was full of painful tangles, and I hadn’t made much progress when the door at the end of the veranda opened and Ren walked out. I squeaked in alarm and hid behind my hair. Perfect, Kells. He was still barefoot, but had on khaki pants and a sky-blue button-down shirt that matched his eyes. The effect was magnetic, and here I was in flannel pajamas with giant tumbleweed hair. He sat across from me and said, “Good evening, Kells. Did you sleep well?” “Uh, yes. Did you?” He grinned a dazzling white smile and nodded his head slightly. “Are you having trouble?” he asked and watched my detangling progress with an amused expression. “Nope. I’ve got it all under control.” I wanted to divert his attention away from my hair, so I said, “How’s your back and your, um, arm, I guess it would be?” He smiled. “They’re completely fine. Thank you for asking.” “Ren, why aren’t you wearing white? That’s all I’ve ever seen you wear. Is it because your white shirt was torn?” He responded, “No, I just wanted to wear something different. Actually, when I change to a tiger and back, my white clothes reappear. If I changed to a tiger now and then switch back to a man again, my current clothes would be replaced with my old white ones.” “Would they still be torn and bloody?” “No. When I reappear, they’re clean and whole again.” “Hah. Lucky for you. It would be pretty awkward if you ended up naked every time you changed.” I bit my tongue as soon as the words came out and blushed a brilliant shade of red. Nice, Kells. Way to go. I covered up my verbal blunder by tugging my hair in front of my face and yanking through the tangles. He grinned. “Yes. Lucky for me.” I tugged the brush through my hair and winced. “That brings up another question.” Ren rose and took the brush out of my hand. “What…what are you doing?” I stammered. “Relax. You’re too edgy.” He had no idea. Moving behind me, Ren picked up a section of my hair and started gently brushing through it. I was nervous at first, but his hands in my hair were so warm and soothing that I soon relaxed in the chair, closed my eyes, and leaned my head back. After a minute of brushing, he pulled a lock away from my neck, leaned down by my ear, and whispered, “What was it you wanted to ask me?” I jumped. “Umm…what?” I mumbled disconcertingly. “You wanted to ask me a question.” “Oh, right. It was, uh-that feels nice.” Did I say that out loud? Ren laughed softly. “That’s not a question.” Apparently, I did. “Was it something about me changing into a tiger?” “Oh, yes. I remember now. You can change back a forth several times per day, right? Is there a limit?” “No. There’s no limit as long as I don’t remain human for more than a total of twenty-four minutes in a twenty-four hour day.” He moved to another section of hair. “Do you have any more questions, sundari?

Outside, not only over our pit but above all far away from it, there was life. You could not think too much about it, but I liked to imagine it so as not to die of forgetfulness. Imagine, and not remember. Life, the real one, not that dirty rag blowing across the ground, no, life in its exquisite beauty. I mean in its simplicity, its marvelous banality: a child smiling after tears; eyes blinking in too bright light; a woman trying on a dress; a man asleep on the grass. A horse galloping across a plain. A man wearing many-colored wings attempting to fly. A tree bending to shade a woman sitting on a stone. The sun drifts off, and you even see a rainbow. Life: it's being able to raise your arm, rub the back of your neck, stretch for the pure pleasure of it, get up and stroll aimlessly, watch people go by, stop, read a newspaper - or simply stay sitting at your window because you have nothing to do and it's nice to do nothing.

VISIONS OF GRANDEUR I'm walking through a sheet of glass instead of the door, Flying over a giant candlestick lighting up Central Park, Repeating two courses at Hard Knock's College, And swimming through the Red Sea with silky jelly fish. I'm hopping over an empty row house in Philadelphia, Getting a seventy dollar manicure on a gondola in Venice, Wearing a white pearl necklace stolen from Goodwill, And running my first New York City marathon. I'm discussing the meaning of life with my late cat Charlie. Dating John Doe- the thirty-third chef at the White House, Running non-stop on a broken leg through a bomb-blasted city, And keeping a multi-lingual monkey named Alfredo as my pet. I'm spying on two hundred and twenty-two homegrown terrorists from Iowa, Worshiped by a red-headed gorilla named Salamander, Sleeping with a giant teddy bear dressed in black leather, And wearing hot pink lipstick over a shade of midnight blue.

Time means succession, and succession, change: Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange Schedules of sentiment. We give advice 570  To widower. He has been married twice: He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both Jealous of one another. Time means growth, And growth means nothing in Elysian life. Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wife Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond Full of a dreamy sky. And, also blond, But with a touch of tawny in the shade, Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade The other sits and raises a moist gaze 580  Toward the blue impenetrable haze. How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy To give the babe? Does that small solemn boy Know of the head-on crash which on a wild March night killed both the mother and the child? And she, the second love, with instep bare In ballerina black, why does she wear The earrings from the other’s jewel case? And why does she avert her fierce young face?

The room was small, lit by two naked bulbs in wall recesses, and bare of anything except for two solid wooden posts the height of a man and four feet apart. In each post, at just below shoulder height, was set a large iron ring. There were two other men already waiting, both leathermen. Len indicated each in turn. 'Rick and Sam.' The two men regarded Mike with arms folded. Rick was in his late twenties, a tall, blond biker, his hair hanging down well past his shoulders. Under his leather waistcoat he was bare-chested, his spare, pale flesh covered with tattoos of skulls, burning angels and other biker motifs, the twining reds, blues and blacks extending along both arms as well. He was wearing black leather gloves and impenetrable black shades. Shaven-headed Sam was older, shorter and stockier, built like a rugby player. A leather harness stretched across the barrel of his chest, its steel circlet buried in wiry hair. Through his leather chaps Mike could see a sizeable pouch, heavy with its contents.

Anna? Anna,are you there? I've been waiting in the lobby for fifteen minutes." A scrambling noise,and St. Clair curses from the floorboards. "And I see your light's off.Brilliant. Could've mentioned you'd decided to go on without me." I explode out of bed. I overslept! I can't believe I overslept! How could this happen? St. Clair's boots clomp away,and his suitcase drags heavily behind him. I throw open my door. Even though they're dimmed this time of night,the crystal sconces in the hall make me blink and shade my eyes. St. Clair twists into focus.He's stunned. "Anna?" "Help," I gasp. "Help me." He drops his suitcase and runs to me. "Are you all right? What happened?" I pull him in and flick on my light. The room is illuminated in its disheveled entirety. My luggage with its zippers open and clothes piled on top like acrobats. Toiletries scattered around my sink. Bedsheets twined into ropes. And me. Belatedly, I remember that not only is my hair crazy and my face smeared with zit cream,but I'm also wearing matching flannel Batman pajamas. "No way." He's gleeful. "You slept in? I woke you up?" I fall to the floor and frantically squish clothes into my suitcase. "You haven't packed yet?" "I was gonna finish this morning! WOULD YOU FREAKING HELP ALREADY?" I tug on a zipper.It catches a yellow Bat symbol, and I scream in frustration. We're going to miss our flight. We're going to iss it,and it's my fault. And who knows when the next plane will leave, and we'll be stuck here all day, and I'll never make it in time for Bridge and Toph's show. And St. Clair's mom will cry when she has to go to the hospital without him for her first round of internal radiation, because he'll be stuck iin an airport on the other side of the world,and its ALL. MY FAULT. "Okay,okay." He takes the zipper and wiggles it from my pajama bottoms. I make a strange sound between a moan and a squeal. The suitcase finally lets go, and St. Clair rests his arms on my shoulders to steady them. "Get dressed. Wipe your face off.I'll takecare of the rest." Yes,one thing at a time.I can do this. I can do this. ARRRGH! He packs my clothes. Don't think about him touching your underwear. Do NOT think about him touching your underwear. I grab my travel outfit-thankfully laid out the night before-and freeze. "Um." St. Clair looks up and sees me holding my jeans. He sputters. "I'll, I'll step out-" "Turn around.Just turn around, there's not time!" He quickly turns,and his shoulders hunch low over my suitcase to prove by posture how hard he is Not Looking.

Sure enough, he saw Kat in the distance, wearing a red coat with a fur-lined collar, trudging through the snow at a leisurely pace. Immediately, he made plans to buy her at least two other outfits in that startling shade. It brought out the soft pink in her skin and the dark midnight of her hair. Perhaps a nightgown in red. Red satin that he could peel off her shoulders... His body clenched with need as hot blood moved to the most uncomfortable places. She inspired such strong reactions in him. Such outrageous desires.

PART TWO Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways. —SIGMUND FREUD CHAPTER ONE Alicia Berenson’s Diary JULY 16 I never thought I’d be longing for rain. We’re into our fourth week of the heat wave, and it feels like an endurance test. Each day seems hotter than the last. It doesn’t feel like England. More like a foreign country—Greece or somewhere. I’m writing this on Hampstead Heath. The whole park is strewn with red-faced, semi-naked bodies, like a beach or a battlefield, on blankets or benches or spread out on the grass. I’m sitting under a tree, in the shade. It’s six o’clock, and it has started to cool down. The sun is low and red in a golden sky—the park looks different in this light—darker shadows, brighter colors. The grass looks like it’s on fire, flickering flames under my feet. I took off my shoes on my way here and walked barefoot. It reminded me of when I was little and I’d play outside. It reminded me of another summer, hot like this one—the summer Mum died—playing outside with Paul, cycling on our bikes through golden fields dotted with wild daisies, exploring abandoned houses and haunted orchards. In my memory that summer lasts forever. I remember Mum and those colorful tops she’d wear, with the yellow stringy straps, so flimsy and delicate—just like her. She was so thin, like a little bird. She would put on the radio and pick me up and dance me around to pop songs on the radio. I remember how she smelled of shampoo and cigarettes and Nivea hand cream, always with an undertone of vodka. How old was she then?

His consolation prize was a hat. A battered fedora that looked as if it had blown off of Humphrey Bogart during the filming of Key Largo. Sucked up into the atmosphere during the movie’s hurricane, it had ended up here, on the other side of the world, sixty years later. On his head. Even though it had been enshrined in a closet inside the house, it kind of smelled as if it had spent about three of those decades at the bottom of a birdcage. Yesiree. It was almost as fun to wear as the brown leather flight jacket. Which really wasn’t fair to the flight jacket. It was a gorgeously cared-for antique that didn’t smell at all. And it definitely worked for him, in terms of some of his flyboy fantasies. But the day had turned into a scorcher. It was just shy of a bazillion degrees in the shade. He needed mittens or perhaps a wool scarf to properly accessorize his impending heat stroke. “Today, playing the role of Indiana Jones, aka Grady Morant, is Jules Cassidy,” he said, as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. Was anyone really going to be fooled by this? Jones was so much taller than he was.

She dug through the clothes packed in the trunk until she found the blue halter top and black jeans she had been wearing the night Veto died. She wasn't sure why she had saved them, but she was glad she had, now. She was going to wear them tonight in honor of Veto. She carried them back to her room, stood in front of the mirror over her dresser, and slipped on the gold earrings that had been a gift from Veto. Then she started to dress. She rubbed glitter lotion over her arms and painted black lines on her eyelids. She rolled on her mascara, then stood back.

Blue pencils, blue noses, blue movies, laws, blue legs and stockings, the language of birds, bees and flowers as sung by longshoremen, that lead-like look the skin has when affected by cold, contusion, sickness, fear; the rotten rum or gin they call blue ruin and the blue devils of its delirium; Russian cats and oysters, a withheld or imprisoned breath, the blue they say that diamonds have, deep holes in the ocean and the blazers which English athletes earn that gentlemen may wear; afflictions of the spirit--dumps, mopes, Mondays--all that's dismal--low-down gloomy music, Nova Scotians, cyanosis, hair rinse, bluing, bleach; the rare blue dahlia like the blue moon shrewd things happen only once in, or the call for trumps in whist (but who remembers whist or what the death of unplayed games is like?), and correspondingly the flag, Blue Peter, which is our signal for getting under way; a swift pitch, Confederate money, the shaded slopes of clouds and mountains, and so the constantly increasing absentness of Heaven (ins Blaue hinein, the Germans say), consequently the color of everything that's empty: blue bottles, bank accounts, and compliments, for instance.

Father reaches out to touch my scarf. “Your mother’s scarf,” he says softly. “She loved this so very much, you know. I remember her creative streak, how she refused to use the strong dye colours that we usually use for silk design. Instead, she preferred a shade of white, which would not sell as successfully in trade. She loved this scarf, the way it sat humbly around her neck and gave her senses of comfort and peace as she held you tight. You would often beg to wear it, Aisha.” I stroke the scarf subconsciously. A memory flashes in my mind of my mother’s shaking hands as she shaped spun silk into this beautiful scarf. My gentle mother, who coughed violently and shook, plagued she was with an illness that had deteriorated her immensely. I spent every moment I could with her, my heart knowing that each might be my last. “Beautiful Aisha, wear this scarf with your love,” said my mother one morning as she tied it around my neck. I stared at her, my lips wobbling as tears rolled down my cheeks. “I’ll wear it, always loving you, Mother,” I replied. My mother nodded, her eyes also filling with tears as she realised that I understood how little time we had left together.

A girl sat neatly on a flat rock. Somehow he’d not seen her. She looked like she’d stepped through the screen of a 1950s movie. Her skin and blond hair were such pale shades they looked monochrome. Her long coat was tied at the waist by a fabric belt. She was probably a few years younger than him, in her early twenties, wearing a white hat with matching gloves. “Sorry,” she said, “If I surprised you.” Her irises were titanium gray, her most striking feature. Her lips were an afterthought and her cheekbones flat. But her eyes...He realized he was staring into them and quickly looked away.

Here are three things I know for sure: 1. When I was born, someone- I like to think it was my mother- wrapped me in a blue ball gown. 2. There is a color in this world that was named after a king's daughter, who always wore gowns that were made of exactly the same shade of blue. The stories about her make me wish sometimes I could have been friends with her; she smoked in public (at a time when women didn't), once jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool with the captain of a ship, often wore a boa constrictor around her neck, and another time shot at telegraph poles from a moving train. 3. My favorite story goes like this: once, on an island not far from here, there was a queen who climbed a tree waiting for her husband to return from a battle. She tied herself to a branch and vowed to remain there until he returned. She waited for so long that she slowly transformed into an orchid, which was an exact replica of the pattern on the blue gown she was wearing. Here's one more thing that I know for sure is true. On the day June told us she was going to hospital to bring you home, I was in the workshop pressing blue lady orchids. I've always loved them best because their centres are my favorite color: the color of the gown I was once wrapped in. The color of a king's wayward daughter favored. A color called Alice blue.

Finally, I have come to realise that an imperfect Life is actually the most perfect Life. I have come to see how Life is beautiful in all its colours, more so because the shades of grey bind them and paint them with even more radiance. A clear sky is always beautiful but what if we never have rain or storm? Sunshine is always wonderful but what if we never have the soothing dusk or the cold night to coil in our own misty self? Storms that come to jolt us often leave us with more courage as we sail along the gust to chase a silver lining. The scorching heat that chokes us often makes us wait more eagerly for that balm of rain. So is Life, in all those moments of sunset we have the hope of the following sunrise, and if we may wait and absorb all that crumbling ray of that sunset we would be able to paint our sunrise with even more crimson smile. Because just like a story, nothing in Life is really concrete without patience. We cannot skip pages of a book because each line contains just so much to seep in, and to have the story fully lived inside our heart and soul we have to keep reading until the very end to feel that sense of peaceful happiness, that always clutches us no matter how the ending is drafted. In the same manner, we have to keep walking through Life, as each and every step of ours leads us to the destination of our Life, the destination of peace, the destination of knowledge of self. The best part of this walk is that it is never a straight line, but is always filled with curves and turns, making us aware of our spirit, laughing loud at times while mourning deep at times. But that is what Life is all about, a bunch of imperfect moments to smile as perfect memories sailing through the potholes of Life, because a straight line even in the world of science means death, after all monotony of perfection is the most cold imperfection. So as we walk through difficult times, may we realise that this sunset is not forever's and that the winter often makes us more aware of the spring. As we drive through a dark night, may we halt for a moment and watch for the stars, the smile of the very stars of gratitude and love that is always there even in the darkest sky of the gloomiest night. As we sail along the ship of Life, may we remember that the winds often guide us to our destination and the storms only come to make our voyage even more adventurous, while the rain clears the cloud so that we may gaze at the full glory of the sky above, with a perfect smile through a voyage of imperfect moments of forever's shine. And so as we keep turning the pages of Life, may we remember to wear that Smile, through every leaf of Life, for Life is rooted in the blooming foliage of its imperfect perfection.

Where dost thou stand behind them all, my lover, hiding thyself in the shadows? They push thee and pass thee by on the dusty road, taking thee for naught. I wait here weary hours spreading my offerings for thee, while passers-by come and take my flowers, one by one, and my basket is nearly empty. The morning time is past, and the noon. In the shade of evening my eyes are drowsy with sleep. Men going home glance at me and smile and fill me with shame. I sit like a beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when they ask me, what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them not. Oh, how, indeed, could I tell them that for thee I wait, and that thou hast promised to come. How could I utter for shame that I keep for my dowry this poverty. Ah, I hug this pride in the secret of my heart. I sit on the grass and gaze upon the sky and dream of the sudden splendour of thy coming---all the lights ablaze, golden pennons flying over thy car, and they at the roadside standing agape, when they see thee come down from thy seat to raise me from the dust, and set at thy side this ragged beggar girl a-tremble with shame and pride, like a creeper in a summer breeze. But time glides on and still no sound of the wheels of thy chariot. Many a procession passes by with noise and shouts and glamour of glory. Is it only thou who wouldst stand in the shadow silent and behind them all? And only I who would wait and weep and wear out my heart in vain longing?

It looked like every cartoon of a flying saucer Newt had ever seen. As he stared over the top of his map, a door in the saucer slid aside with a satisfying whoosh, revealing a gleaming walkway which extended automatically down to the road. Brilliant blue light shone out, outlining three alien shapes. They walked down the ramp. At least, two of them walked. The one that looked like a pepper pot just skidded down it, and fell over at the bottom. The other two ignored its frantic beeping and walked over to the car quite slowly, in the worldwide approved manner of policemen already compiling the charge sheet it their heads. The tallest one, a yellow toad dressed in kitchen foil, rapped on Newt's window. He wound it down. The thing was wearing the kind of mirror-finished sunglasses that Newt always thought of as Cool Hand Luke shades. 'Morning, sir or madam or neuter,' the thing said. 'This your planet, is it?' The other alien, which was stubby and green, had wandered off into the woods by the side of the road. Out of the corner of his eye Newt saw it kick a tree, and then run a leaf through some complicated gadget on its belt. It didn't look very pleased. 'Well, yes. I suppose so.' he said. The toad stared thoughtfully at the skyline. 'Had it long, have we, sir?' it said. 'Er. Not personally. I mean, as a species, about half a million years. I think.' The alien exchanged glances with its colleague. 'Been letting the old acid rain build up, haven't we, sir?' it said. 'Been letting ourselves go a bit with the old hydrocarbons, perhaps?' 'I'm sorry.' 'Could you tell me your planet's albedo, sir?' said the the toad, still staring levelly at the horizon as though it was doing something interesting. 'Er. No.' 'Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir, that your polar ice caps are below regulation size for a planet of this category, sir.' 'Oh, dear,' said Newt. He was wondering who he could tell about this, and realizing that there was absolutely no one who would believe him. [...] The small alien walked past the car. 'CO2 level up 0.5 percent,' it rasped, giving him a meaningful look. 'You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?

The Dying Man" in memoriam W.B. Yeats 1. His words I heard a dying man Say to his gathered kin, “My soul’s hung out to dry, Like a fresh salted skin; I doubt I’ll use it again. “What’s done is yet to come; The flesh deserts the bone, But a kiss widens the rose I know, as the dying know Eternity is Now. “A man sees, as he dies, Death’s possibilities; My heart sways with the world. I am that final thing, A man learning to sing. 2. What Now? Caught in the dying light, I thought myself reborn. My hand turn into hooves. I wear the leaden weight Of what I did not do. Places great with their dead, The mire, the sodden wood, Remind me to stay alive. I am the clumsy man The instant ages on. I burned the flesh away, In love, in lively May. I turn my look upon Another shape than hers Now, as the casement blurs. In the worst night of my will, I dared to question all, And would the same again. What’s beating at the gate? Who’s come can wait. 3. The Wall A ghost comes out of the unconscious mind To grope my sill: It moans to be reborn! The figure at my back is not my friend; The hand upon my shoulder turns to horn. I found my father when I did my work, Only to lose myself in this small dark. Though it reject dry borders of the seen, What sensual eye can keep and image pure, Leaning across a sill to greet the dawn? A slow growth is a hard thing to endure. When figures our of obscure shadow rave, All sensual love’s but dancing on a grave. The wall has entered: I must love the wall, A madman staring at perpetual night, A spirit raging at the visible. I breathe alone until my dark is bright. Dawn’s where the white is. Who would know the dawn When there’s a dazzling dark behind the sun. 4. The Exulting Once I delighted in a single tree; The loose air sent me running like a child– I love the world; I want more than the world, Or after image of the inner eye. Flesh cries to flesh, and bone cries out to bone; I die into this life, alone yet not alone. Was it a god his suffering renewed?– I saw my father shrinking in his skin; He turned his face: there was another man, Walking the edge, loquacious, unafraid. He quivered like a bird in birdless air, Yet dared to fix his vision anywhere. Fish feed on fish, according to their need: My enemies renew me, and my blood Beats slower in my careless solitude. I bare a wound, and dare myself to bleed. I think a bird, and it begins to fly. By dying daily, I have come to be. All exultation is a dangerous thing. I see you, love, I see you in a dream; I hear a noise of bees, a trellis hum, And that slow humming rises into song. A breath is but a breath: I have the earth; I shall undo all dying with my death. 5. They Sing, They Sing All women loved dance in a dying light– The moon’s my mother: how I love the moon! Out of her place she comes, a dolphin one, Then settles back to shade and the long night. A beast cries out as if its flesh were torn, And that cry takes me back where I was born. Who thought love but a motion in the mind? Am I but nothing, leaning towards a thing? I scare myself with sighing, or I’ll sing; Descend O gentlest light, descend, descend. I sweet field far ahead, I hear your birds, They sing, they sing, but still in minor thirds. I’ve the lark’s word for it, who sings alone: What’s seen recededs; Forever’s what we know!– Eternity defined, and strewn with straw, The fury of the slug beneath the stone. The vision moves, and yet remains the same. In heaven’s praise, I dread the thing I am. The edges of the summit still appall When we brood on the dead or the beloved; Nor can imagination do it all In this last place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.

Teddy Roosevelt?" I suggested. Sadie and I had been trying to figure out the second mathlete's costume for a few minutes. He was wearing a 1930's-style suit,had his hair slicked down carefully, and was sporting a fake mustache. "No glasses. And I can't even begin to imagine the connection between Davy Jone's Locker and Teddy Roosevelt." Sadie pulled a long gold hair from her pumpkin-orange punch and sighed. Maybe her mother hadn't topped her Sleepy Hollow triumph, but it wasn't from lack of determination. What Mrs. Winslow hadn't achieved in creativity (she'd gone the mermaid route), she'd made up in the details. The tailed skirt was intricately beaded and embroidered in a dozen shades of blue and green. It was pretty amazing.The problem was the bodice: not a bikini, but not much better as far as Sadie was concerned. It was green, plunging, and edged with itchy-looking scallops. She was managing to stay covered by the wig, but that was an issue in itself. It was massive,made up of hundreds of trailing corkscrew curls in a metallic blonde. To top it all off, the costume included a glittering, three point crown, and a six-foot trident, complete with jewels and trailing silk seaweed. "Sadie," I'd asked quietly when she'd appeared at my house, shivering and tangled in her wig, "why don't you..." Just tell her where she can shove her trident? But that would just have been mean. Sadie gives in and wears the costumes because it's infinitely easier than fighting. "...come next door and we'll see if Sienna has a shawl you can borrow?

The hex wall is gone- it's been replaced by a solid wall of clear material. And on the other side of that wall is Rocky. He's a spider. A big-assed spider. I turn to flee. But my rational brain takes over. 'Easy... easy... they're friendly.' I say to myself. I turn back and take in the scene. Rocky is smaller than a human. He's about the size of a Labrador. He has five legs radiating out from a central carapace-looking thing. The carapace, which is roughly a pentagon, is 18 inches across and half as thick. I don't see eyes or a face anywhere. Each leg has a joint in the middle- I'll call it an elbow. Each leg (or should I say arm?) ends in a hand. So he's got five hands. Each hand has those triangular fingers I got a good look at last time. Looks like all five hands are the same. I don't see any "front" or "back" to him. He appears to be pentagonally symmetrical. He wears clothing. The legs are bare, showing the rocklike skin, but there's cloth on the carapace. Sort of like a shirt with five armholes. I don't know what the shirt is made of but it looks thicker than typical human clothing. It's a dull greenish-brown, and inconsistently shaded. The top of the shirt has a large open hole. Like where the neck goes on a human's t-shirt. This hole is smaller than the carapace/ So he must have to put that shirt on by pulling it downward and sliding the arms through their respective holes. Again, like a human's shirt. But there's no neck or head to go through that hole on top- just a hard-looking rocky pentagon that sticks up a little bit from the crusty skin.

In one slick move, he shoves his phone in his pocket and grabs me so we’re in front of the cabinet. His hand slides around the back of my neck, and before I can panic, he kisses me hard. Momentarily caught off guard, I just throw my arms around his neck and press my body against his. His kiss deepens until our tongues are twisting together, and I’m reminded of just how great a kisser he is. The lights flicker on, and Grayson pulls away from me with a grunt. I’m so flustered, it takes me a few seconds to collect myself enough to see a man wearing a suit and a hotel name badge eyeing us. “Excuse me, Mr. Cole, I’m afraid this office is off-limits for guests,” he says. I glance at Grayson and have to stop myself from laughing at the shade of my lipstick he’s now wearing. Grayson doesn’t miss a beat; he just grabs my hand and tugs me across the room. “I won’t mention this if you don’t,” he says as we pass by the hotel porter. I try for a sheepish smile as we walk past him. “Sorry,” I mouth. As we make it out to the hallway, a half-smothered giggle escapes before I can stop it. “You should probably go to the men’s room before you go back to the party.” A smile creases his lipstick-smeared mouth before he swipes his hand over it. “Yeah. This isn’t really my shade.” I snort a laugh and try to laugh off the kiss. But as I head back to the party, I’m well aware that kiss has only stirred a desire for another one. Not only that but as I pull my mirror out to check my own face, I realize something I didn’t in the heat of the moment. ​There was nothing fake about that kiss.

BLUE pencils, blue noses, blue movies, laws, blue legs and stockings, the language of birds, bees, and flowers as sung by longshoremen, that lead-like look the skin has when affected by cold, contusion, sickness, fear; the rotten rum or gin they call blue ruin and the blue devils of its delirium; Russian cats and oysters, a withheld or imprisoned breath, the blue they say that diamonds have, deep holes in the ocean and the blazers which English athletes earn that gentlemen may wear; afflictions of the spirit—dumps, mopes, Mondays—all that’s dismal—low-down gloomy music, Nova Scotians, cyanosis, hair rinse, bluing, bleach; the rare blue dahlia like that blue moon shrewd things happen only once in, or the call for trumps in whist (but who remembers whist or what the death of unplayed games is like?), and correspondingly the flag, Blue Peter, which is our signal for getting under way; a swift pitch, Confederate money, the shaded slopes of clouds and mountains, and so the constantly increasing absentness of Heaven (ins Blaue hinein, the Germans say), consequently the color of everything that’s empty: blue bottles, bank accounts, and compliments, for instance, or, when the sky’s turned turtle, the blue-green bleat of ocean (both the same), and, when in Hell, its neatly landscaped rows of concrete huts and gas-blue flames; social registers, examination booklets, blue bloods, balls, and bonnets, beards, coats, collars, chips, and cheese . . . the pedantic, indecent and censorious . . . watered twilight, sour sea: through a scrambling of accidents, blue has become their color, just as it’s stood for fidelity.

As humans we spend our time seeking big, meaningful experiences. So the afterlife may surprise you when your body wears out. We expand back into what we really are—which is, by Earth standards, enormous. We stand ten thousand kilometers tall in each of nine dimensions and live with others like us in a celestial commune. When we reawaken in these, our true bodies, we immediately begin to notice that our gargantuan colleagues suffer a deep sense of angst. Our job is the maintenance and upholding of the cosmos. Universal collapse is imminent, and we engineer wormholes to act as structural support. We labor relentlessly on the edge of cosmic disaster. If we don’t execute our jobs flawlessly, the universe will re-collapse. Ours is complex, intricate, and important work. After three centuries of this toil, we have the option to take a vacation. We all choose the same destination: we project ourselves into lower-dimensional creatures. We project ourselves into the tiny, delicate, three-dimensional bodies that we call humans, and we are born onto the resort we call Earth. The idea, on such vacations, is to capture small experiences. On the Earth, we care only about our immediate surroundings. We watch comedy movies. We drink alcohol and enjoy music. We form relationships, fight, break up, and start again. When we’re in a human body, we don’t care about universal collapse—instead, we care only about a meeting of the eyes, a glimpse of bare flesh, the caressing tones of a loved voice, joy, love, light, the orientation of a house plant, the shade of a paint stroke, the arrangement of hair. Those are good vacations that we take on Earth, replete with our little dramas and fusses. The mental relaxation is unspeakably precious to us. And when we’re forced to leave by the wearing out of those delicate little bodies, it is not uncommon to see us lying prostrate in the breeze of the solar winds, tools in hand, looking out into the cosmos, wet-eyed, searching for meaninglessness.

Griff entered the cave, sword in hand. He had no desire to frighten Astelle, but he had to be prepared for anything. She jumped up from her fireside position with a small stifled scream at his entry, then continued to back fearfully towards the shadowed wall. She was quite alone. Griff could sense no other presence – only hers, and the wonder of it. He sheathed his sword, and gazed upon his long-lost love. Her hair had lost all trace of colour while still retaining the texture of youth, giving the appearance of white silk. There was a pulsating light of a blue-lilac shade which clung to the crown of her head, reflecting in the hair – a soul – a lost spirit – someone who had loved her. She was almost as pale as death, for Torking took far too much blood from her, too frequently. She was also much thinner than she should have been, but for all of this, she was still the most beautiful sight of his life. Her body was ravaged with Torking's bites and claw-marks. She was still wearing his old cloak which Griff instantly recognised, though it was little more than a rag, wrapped around her body and tied on one shoulder. Her beautiful dark eyes, those which had so haunted his dreams, seemed over-large in her pale face, as she stared at him with a mingling of shock, disbelief and joy. Griff took a few hesitant steps towards her, unsure of his reception. ‘Astelle?’ His voice grated with emotion. How often had she yearned to hear him speak her name exactly in that way? ‘Astelle – is it really you?’ He was just as divinely handsome as she remembered, and he looked so fine – he looked magnificent in Gremlen battledress. In the flickering torchlight, the blue krulmesh armour glittered over the black leather tunic. The emerald sheen in his raven hair was vivid as ever. Best of all, his dark forest-green eyes were shining with love, and she suddenly understood that Griff was a hundred times more beautiful than Torking, for his eyes held everything that was good, fine and noble. Astelle's heart almost stopped beating as she gazed at him. Her eyes filled with tears, and her lip trembled as she tried to whisper his name.

Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Bus number twelve is her favorite place for watching, inside and out. The bus passes cars and bicycles and people walking dogs. It passes store windows, and every so often Minna sees her face reflection, two dark eyes in a face as pale as a winter dawn. There are fourteen people on the bus today. Minna stands up to count them. She likes to count people, telephone poles, hats, umbrellas, and, lately, earrings. One girl, sitting directly in front of Minna, has seven earrings, five in one ear. She has wisps of dyed green hair that lie like forsythia buds against her neck. There are, Minna knows, a king, a past president of the United States, and a beauty queen on the bus. Minna can tell by looking. The king yawns and scratches his ear with his little finger. Scratches, not picks. The beauty queen sleeps, her mouth open, her hair the color of tomatoes not yet ripe. The past preside of the United States reads Teen Love and Body Builder's Annual. Next to Minna, leaning against the seat, is her cello in its zippered canvas case. Next to her cello is her younger brother, McGrew, who is humming. McGrew always hums. Sometimes he hums sentences, though most often it comes out like singing. McGrew's teachers do not enjoy McGrew answering questions in hums or song. Neither does the school principal, Mr. Ripley. McGrew spends lots of time sitting on the bench outside Mr. Ripley's office, humming. Today McGrew is humming the newspaper. First the headlines, then the sports section, then the comics. McGrew only laughs at the headlines. Minna smiles at her brother. He is small and stocky and compact like a suitcase. Minna loves him. McGrew always tells the truth, even when he shouldn't. He is kind. And he lends Minna money from the coffee jar he keeps beneath his mattress. Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A better one. McGrew knows this, too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.

The Sailor-boy’s Gossip You say, dear mamma, it is good to be talking With those who will kindly endeavour to teach. And I think I have learnt something while I was walking Along with the sailor-boy down on the beach. He told me of lands where he soon will be going, Where humming-birds scarcely are bigger than bees, Where the mace and the nutmeg together are growing, And cinnamon formeth the bark of some trees. He told me that islands far out in the ocean Are mountains of coral that insects have made, And I freely confess I had hardly a notion That insects could world in the way that he said. He spoke of wide deserts where the sand-clouds are flying. No shade for the brow, and no grass for the feet; Where camels and travelers often lie dying, Gasping for water and scorching with heat. He told me of places away in the East, Where topaz, and ruby, and sapphires are found: Where you never are safe from the snake and the beast, For the serpent and tiger and jackal abound. I thought our own Thames was a very great stream, With its waters so fresh and its currents so strong; But how tiny our largest of rivers must seem To those he had sailed on, three thousand miles long. He speaks, dear mamma, of so many strange places, With people who neither have cities nor kings. Who wear skins on their shoulders, paint on their faces, And live on the spoils which their hunting-field brings. Oh! I long, dear mamma, to learn more of these stories, From books that are written to please and to teach, And I wish I could see half the curious glories The sailor-boy told me of down on the beach. Eliza Cook.

Then she bent her head over at the waist and tossed her head around to separate the curls. The elevator stopped and she heard the door open. She straightened up to find some big guy in a ball cap and sunglasses right in her face, charging into the elevator before she could even get out of it. He had both hands full of carry-out bags—Mexican food, judging from the smell. She looked at them, her mouth watering. Yep. Enrique’s. The best in town. He whirled around to punch the door-close button. “Hey,” she said. “I’m getting off here.” Some girl outside in the lobby yelled, “We know it’s you, Chase. You shouldn’t lie to us.” Startled, Elle looked at the guy’s face and saw, just before he reached for her, that it really was Chase Lomax in ragged shorts and flip-flops. He grabbed her up off her feet and bent his head. Found her mouth with his. “Wait for us,” another girl yelled. The sound of running feet echoed off the marble floor, slid to a stop. “Oh, no!” Kissing her, without so much as a “Hi, there, Elle.” Burning her up. She tried to struggle but he had both her arms pinned to her sides. And suddenly she wanted to stay right where she was forever because the shock was wearing off and she was starting to feel. A lot more than she ever had before. The door slid closed. The girls began banging on it. “We know your room number, Chase, honey,” they yelled. “See you there.” Loud giggles. “We’ll show you a real good time.” The elevator moved up, the voices faded away. But Chase kept on kissing her. She had to make him stop it. Right now. Who did he think he was, anyway? Somebody who could send lightning right through her whole body, that’s who. Lightning so strong it shook her to her toes. He had to stop this now. But she couldn’t move any part of her body. Except her lips. And her tongue . . . When he finally let her go she pulled back and away, fighting to get a handle on her breathing. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. Her blood rushed through her so fast it made her dizzy. “You’re asking me? It’s more like, what’s the matter with you? How’d you get the idea you could get away with kissing me like that without even bothering to say hello?” She touched her lips. They were still on fire. “You have got a helluva nerve, Chase Lomax.” He grinned at her as he took off his shades. He hung them in the neck of his huge, baggy T-shirt that had a bucking bull and rider with Git’R’Done written above it. He wore ragged denim shorts and flip-flops, for God’s sake. Chase Lomax was known for always being starched and ironed, custom-booted and hatted. “I asked if you’re all right because you were bent over double shaking your head when the doors opened,” he said. “Like you were in pain or something.” “I was drying my hair.” He stared, then burst out laughing. “Oh, well, then.” His laugh was contagious but she wouldn’t let herself join in. He could not get away with this scot-free. He’d shaken her up pretty good. “Oh. I see. You thought I needed help, so you just grabbed me and kissed me senseless. Is that how you treat somebody you think’s in pain?” He grinned that slow, charming grin of his again. “It made you feel better. Didn’t it?” He held her gaze and wouldn’t let it go. She must be a sight. She could feel heat in her cheeks, so her face must be red. Plus she was gasping, trying to slow her breathing. And her heart-beat. “You nearly scared me to death to try to get rid of those girls. And it was all wasted. They’re coming to your room.” Something flashed deep in his brown eyes. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings. I don’t think it was wasted,” he drawled. “I liked that kiss.

Rider scooped Willow into his arms and carried her outside to the nearest tree, Miriam right behind him. Awkwardly shifting his burden, he sat in the shade and settled Willow in his lap. "Mrs. Brigham, could you lend me a hand?" he asked anxiously. "I think we should loosen her clothing or something." Rider propped Willow's limp form over one arm, giving Miriam access to the back of the girl's dress. As the corset came into view, he snorted in disgust. "Unlace that contraption, too. No wonder she fainted; she can't breathe." Miriam looked aghast. "Oh, but I can't do that! It wouldn't be decent." "She's wearing something under it, isn't she?" "Well, yes, but--" "Good God, I'll do it myself!" His free hand produced a small knife from his pants pocket. The blade flashed and before Miriam could stop him, the corset ribbons were severed. Immediately, Willow inhaled deeply. Rider shifted her back into the bend of his arm and gently patted her cheeks. "Come on, little girl, open those big blue eyes." Inhaling another deep breath, Willow gradually came around. She blinked at the leafy roof overhead, then focused a confused gaze on Rider's smiling face. "What happened? How did I get out here?" Glancing around, she impatiently brushed a few errant strands of hair from her eyes. "Oh, my dear, you fainted," Miriam fussed. "Fainted! I've never fainted in my life. I'm not the fainting kind." "Maybe not under normal circumstances," Rider contradicted, "but you did faint. And it's little wonder, trussed up in that ridiculous corset. Wearing that thing in this heat is insane!" "Really, Mr. Sinclair." Miriam scowled. "I hardly think this is an appropriate subject in mixed company." "I'm sorry, Mrs. Brigham, but it's the truth." "I don't care what either one of you says," Willow broke in. "I did not faint." Rider grimaced in disgust. "Just dozed off again, huh?

At first piecemeal, then point-blank, he let his attention be drawn to a little scene that was being acted out sublimely, unhampered by writers and directors and producers, five stories below the window and across the street. A fair-sized maple tree stood in front of the girls' private school--one of four or five trees on that fortunate side of the street--and at the moment a child of seven or eight, female, was hiding behind it. She was wearing a navy-blue reefer and a tam that was very nearly the same shade of red as the blanket on the bed in van Gogh's room at Aries. Her tam did, in fact, from Zooey's vantage point, appear not unlike a dab of paint. Some fifteen feet away from the child, her dog--a young dachshund, wearing a green leather collar and leash--was sniffing to find her, scurrying in frantic circles, his leash dragging behind him. The anguish of separation was scarcely bearable for him, and when at last he picked up his mistress's scent, it wasn't a second too soon. The joy of reunion, for both, was immense. The dachshund gave a little yelp, then cringed forward, shimmying with ecstasy, till his mistress, shouting something at him, stepped hurriedly over the wire guard surrounding the tree and picked him up. She said a number of words of praise to him, in the private argot of the game, then put him down and picked up his leash, and the two walked gaily west, toward Fifth Avenue and the Park and out of Zooey's sight. Zooey reflexively put his hand on a cross-piece between panes of glass, as if he had a mind to raise the window and lean out of it to watch the two disappear. It was his cigar hand, however, and he hesitated a second too long. He dragged on his cigar. "God damn it," he said, "there are nice things in the world--and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos." Behind him, just then, Franny blew her nose with guileless abandon; the report was considerably louder than might have been expected from so fine and delicate-appearing an organ. Zooey turned around to look at her, somewhat censoriously.