When Your Pocket Is Empty Quotes

I almost miss the sound of your voice but know that the rain outside my window will suffice for tonight. I’m not drunk yet, but we haven’t spoken in months now and I wanted to tell you that someone threw a bouquet of roses in the trash bin on the corner of my street, and I wanted to cry because, because — well, you know exactly why. And, I guess I’m calling because only you understand how that would break my heart. I’m running out of things to say. My gas is running on empty. I’ve stopped stealing pages out of poetry books, but last week I pocketed a thesaurus and looked for synonyms for you but could only find rain and more rain and a thunderstorm that sounded like glass, like crystal, like an orchestra. I wanted to tell you that I’m not afraid of being moved anymore; Not afraid of this heart packing up its things and flying transcontinental with only a wool coat and a pocket with a folded-up address inside. I’ve saved up enough money to disappear. I know you never thought the day would come. Do you remember when we said goodbye and promised that it was only for then? It’s been years since I last saw you, years since we last have spoken. Sometimes, it gets quiet enough that I can hear the cicadas rubbing their thighs against each other’s. I’ve forgotten almost everything about you already, except that your skin was soft, like the belly of a peach, and how you would laugh, making fun of me for the way I pronounced almonds like I was falling in love with language.

Poor whites are still taught to hate—but not to hate those who are keeping them in line. Lyndon Johnson knew this when he quipped, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” We

Poor whites are still taught to hate—but not to hate those who are keeping them in line. Lyndon Johnson knew this when he quipped, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,b chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Extravagant love, as in every generation before us, has been ridiculed and scorned. it is seen as wasteful and reckless overspending. But extravagant love, the offering of everything, the emptying of the pockets of our life, is the essence of true Christianity.

You are truly rich when your heart is full of joy, even if your pockets are empty.

When your pockets are empty, go where your heart is full.

I coax my palm into his lapel in search of my wish, returning his feverish kiss. "Checkmate, you son of a bug," I say against his mouth two seconds before my fingers find an empty pocket. "Sleight of hand, blossom," he says right back. "'Tis in fact in my pants pocket, if you'd like to search there." I shove him off and drop to the floor, wiping my mouth. "It's mine!" "And you'll receive it when the time is right." His lips, all I can look at, tilt into that smug smile that I've come to detest. He motions toward the chair. "Sit. You've just been soundly kissed. No doubt you're short of breath." "Don't flatter yourself." I huff in an effort to hide the gulp of air and hold the teddy bear against my chest. "That kiss meant nothing. It had underlying motivation." "Oh, to be sure. That kiss was nothing if not motivational.

God Bless The Child" Them that's got shall have Them that's not shall lose So the Bible says and it still is news Mama may have, Papa may have But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own Yes the strong get smart While the weak ones fade Empty pockets don't ever make the grade Mama may have, Papa may have But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own Money, you've got lots of friends They're crowding around your door But when you're gone and spending ends They don't come no more Rich relations give crusts of bread and such You can help yourself, but don't take too much Mama may have, Papa may have But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own Money you've got lots of friends They're crowding around your door But when you're gone and spending ends They don't come no more Rich relations give crusts of bread and such You can help yourself, but don't take too much Mama may have, Papa may have But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own Here just don't worry about nothing cause he's got his own Yes, he's got his own

There is nothing quite as painful as a truly awkward silence. If you have fallen in love and you tell the object of your affection how you feel and she simply stares at you, the air still and empty, that's awkward. Perhaps you finally get up the nerve to ask your boss for a raise and after you master the courage to blurt out your request he lets it hang there in the open air. This can be an awkward silence as well. But for some reason both these examples pale in comparison to the kind of uncomfortable silence a person might experience when trapped in the stomach of a colossal snake, miles under ground, where there is nothing but total darkness and the sound of your own self taking your final hot breathes of musty, stale air, after you've just heard the news that the one person who you believe could save you just because he is so big and powerful is hiding out in the pocket of a friend as a . . . toothpick

Jules had listened in on nearly every word exchanged while they’d been back there together, and it was more than obvious that Max had yet to pull Gina into his arms and do his imitation of the Han Solo and Princess Leia big-moment kiss from The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe when Jules and the E-man walked out of the garage and climbed into that ancient Escort—which turned out to be part of the Testa fleet-Max would take the opportunity to plant a big, wet one on this woman that he still so obviously adored. Or maybe not. “Sweetie, I love the haircut,” Jules told Gina as he gave Max back his cell phone. “You look fabulous for a woman who’s been dead for five days.” “What?” she said, but it was time to go. “Max’ll fill you in,” he said. There. There was no way Max was going to be table to tell Gina about receiving the report of her death without getting a little misty-eyed. At which point Gina would, at the very least, throw her arms around him. If Max couldn’t manage to turn that into a truth-revealing kiss, he didn’t deserve the woman. “Ow,” he added as Emilio pressed his weapon into Jules’s kidney. “Sorry,” Emilio managed to put the right amount of apology into his voice, but he was obviously so stressed that he didn’t quite get the right facial expression to match. It was pretty odd. Particularly when he jabbed Jules again. “Let’s go.” Wow, wasn’t this going to be fun? Max, meanwhile, had stepped protectively in front of Gina. He caught and held Jules’s gaze. “We’ll wait for your call.” Silently, he sent another message entirely. If Emilio gave Jules any trouble, he should shoot him. Never mind the fact that Emilio was the one with the drawn weapon. Never mind that Jules’s hands were out and empty, and that he’d have a major bullet hole in his body if he so much as put said hands near his pockets.

What does this F. — I.W. mean?” “Initial-slang,” informed Baines. “Made correct by common usage. It has become a worldwide motto. You’ll see it all over the place if you haven’t noticed it already.” “I have seen it here and there but attached no importance to it and thought nothing more about it. I remember now that it was inscribed in several places including Seth’s and the fire depot.” “It was on the sides of that bus we couldn’t empty,” put in Gleed. “It didn’t mean anything to me.” “It means plenty,” said Jeff. “Freedom — I Won’t!” “That kills me,” Gleed responded. “I’m stone dead already. I’ve dropped in my tracks.” He watched Harrison thoughtfully pocketing the plaque. “A piece of abracadabra. What a weapon!” “Ignorance is bliss,” asserted Baines, strangely sure of himself. “Especially when you don’t know that what you’re playing with is the safety catch of something that goes bang.” “All right,” challenged Gleed, taking him up on that. “Tell us how it works.” “I won’t.” Baines’ grin reappeared. He seemed to be highly satisfied about something. “That’s a fat lot of help.” Gleed felt let down, especially over that momentary hoped-for reward. “You brag and boast about a one-way weapon, toss across a slip of stuff with three letters on it and then go dumb. Any folly will do for braggarts and any braggart can talk through the seat of his pants. How about backing up your talk?” “I won’t,” repeated Baines, his grin broader than ever. He gave the onlooking Harrison a fat, significant wink. It made something spark vividly within Harrison’s mind. His jaw dropped, he dragged the plaque from his pocket and stared at it as if seeing it for the first time. “Give it back to me,” requested Baines, watching him. Replacing it in his pocket, Harrison said very firmly, “I won’t.” Baines chuckled. “Some people catch on quicker than others.

Write me a story, Kitt,” she whispered, kissing his brow, the hollow of his cheek. His lips and his throat, until she felt like love was an axe that had cleaved her chest open. Her very heart was beating in the air. “Write me a story where you keep me up late every night with your typing, and I hide messages in your pockets for you to find while you’re at work. Write me a story where we first met on a street corner, and I spilled coffee on your expensive trench coat, or when we crossed paths at our favorite bookshop, and I recommended poetry, and you recommended myths. Or that time when the deli got our sandwich orders wrong, or when we ended up sitting next to each other at the ball game, or I dared to take the train west just to see how far I could go, and you just so happened to be there too.” She swallowed the ache in her throat, leaning back to meet his gaze. Gently, as if he were a dream, she touched his hair. She smoothed the dark tendrils from his brow. “Write me a story where there is no ending, Kitt. Write to me and fill my empty spaces.” Ronan held her gaze, desperation gleaming in his eyes. An expression flickered over his face, one she had never seen before. It looked like both pleasure and pain, like he was drowning in her and her words. They were iron and salt, a blade and a remedy, and he was taking a final gasp of air.

Sonnet of Consumerism Ever wonder in a world of consumerism, Who's the consumer, who's the product! You may think that you are the one owning things, But it's the things that own you, head and heart. When unmoderated materialism is the world's norm, Consumer is the product, product does the consuming. And this insanity is revered as industrial growth, Then they wonder, why is there so much suffering! The point is, your insecurity is good for business, The shallower you are, the more your pocket empties. But if you don't wanna end up at la casa de loco, Stop living in products and focus on memories. Corporations chasing revenue cause economic disparity. Buy less, buy local, to construct a sustainable economy.

Then I saw Vas, clutching a mug of tea with bleeding knuckles. When he noticed the blood, he dabbed at it with a handkerchief and stuffed it back into his pocket. “I know you can’t feel pain, Vas, but there is some value in taking care of your own body,” I said to him. He raised his eyebrows at me, then set his mug down. The others were gathered on the opposite end of the room, holding glasses, standing in small groups. Most had collected around Ryzek like debris around a drain hole. Yma Zetsyvis--white hair almost glowing against the dark backdrop of space--was among them, her body stiff with obvious tension. Otherwise the room was empty, the black floors polished, the walls just curved windows. I half expected us all to float away. “You know so little about my gift, for all the time we’ve known each other,” Vas said. “Do you know I have to set alarms to eat and drink? And check myself constantly for broken bones and bruises?” I had never thought about what else Vas had lost when he lost the ability to feel pain. “That’s why I let the little wounds slide,” Vas said. “It’s exhausting, paying this much attention to your own body.” “Hmm,” I said. “I think I might know something about that.

Honest to God, I hadn’t meant to start a bar fight. “So. You’re the famous Jordan Amador.” The demon sitting in front of me looked like someone filled a pig bladder with rotten cottage cheese. He overflowed the bar stool with his gelatinous stomach, just barely contained by a white dress shirt and an oversized leather jacket. Acid-washed jeans clung to his stumpy legs and his boots were at least twice the size of mine. His beady black eyes started at my ankles and dragged upward, past my dark jeans, across my black turtleneck sweater, and over the grey duster around me that was two sizes too big. He finally met my gaze and snorted before continuing. “I was expecting something different. Certainly not a black girl. What’s with the name, girlie?” I shrugged. “My mother was a religious woman.” “Clearly,” the demon said, tucking a fat cigar in one corner of his mouth. He stood up and walked over to the pool table beside him where he and five of his lackeys had gathered. Each of them was over six feet tall and were all muscle where he was all fat. “I could start to examine the literary significance of your name, or I could ask what the hell you’re doing in my bar,” he said after knocking one of the balls into the left corner pocket. “Just here to ask a question, that’s all. I don’t want trouble.” Again, he snorted, but this time smoke shot from his nostrils, which made him look like an albino dragon. “My ass you don’t. This place is for fallen angels only, sweetheart. And we know your reputation.” I held up my hands in supplication. “Honest Abe. Just one question and I’m out of your hair forever.” My gaze lifted to the bald spot at the top of his head surrounded by peroxide blonde locks. “What’s left of it, anyway.” He glared at me. I smiled, batting my eyelashes. He tapped his fingers against the pool cue and then shrugged one shoulder. “Fine. What’s your question?” “Know anybody by the name of Matthias Gruber?” He didn’t even blink. “No.” “Ah. I see. Sorry to have wasted your time.” I turned around, walking back through the bar. I kept a quick, confident stride as I went, ignoring the whispers of the fallen angels in my wake. A couple called out to me, asking if I’d let them have a taste, but I didn’t spare them a glance. Instead, I headed to the ladies’ room. Thankfully, it was empty, so I whipped out my phone and dialed the first number in my Recent Call list. “Hey. He’s here. Yeah, I’m sure it’s him. They’re lousy liars when they’re drunk. Uh-huh. Okay, see you in five.” I hung up and let out a slow breath. Only a couple things left to do. I gathered my shoulder-length black hair into a high ponytail. I looped the loose curls around into a messy bun and made sure they wouldn’t tumble free if I shook my head too hard. I took the leather gloves in the pocket of my duster out and pulled them on. Then, I walked out of the bathroom and back to the front entrance. The coat-check girl gave me a second unfriendly look as I returned with my ticket stub to retrieve my things—three vials of holy water, a black rosary with the beads made of onyx and the cross made of wood, a Smith & Wesson .9mm Glock complete with a full magazine of blessed bullets and a silencer, and a worn out page of the Bible. I held out my hands for the items and she dropped them on the counter with an unapologetic, “Oops.” “Thanks,” I said with a roll of my eyes. I put the Glock back in the hip holster at my side and tucked the rest of the items in the pockets of my duster. The brunette demon crossed her arms under her hilariously oversized fake breasts and sent me a vicious sneer. “The door is that way, Seer. Don’t let it hit you on the way out.” I smiled back. “God bless you.” She let out an ugly hiss between her pearly white teeth. I blew her a kiss and walked out the door. The parking lot was packed outside now that it was half-past midnight. Demons thrived in darkness, so I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’d been counting on it.

Tom, will you let me love you in your restaurant? i will let you make me a sandwich of your invention and i will eat it and call it a carolyn sandwich. then you will kiss my lips and taste the mayonnaise and that is how you shall love me in my restaurant. Tom, will you come up to my empty beige apartment and help me set up my daybed? yes, and i will put the screws in loosely so that when we move on it, later, it will rock like a cradle and then you will know you are my baby Tom, I am sitting on my dirt bike on the deck. Will you come out from the kitchen and watch the people with me? yes, and then we will race to your bedroom. i will win and we will tangle up on your comforter while the sweat rains from your stomachs and foreheads. Tom, the stars are sitting in tonight like gumball gems in a little girl’s jewlery box. Later can we walk to the duck pond? yes, and we can even go the long way past the jungle gym. i will push you on the swing, but promise me you’ll hold tight. if you fall i might disappear. Tom, can we make a baby together? I want to be a big pregnant woman with a loved face and give you a squalling red daughter. no, but i will come inside you and you will be my daughter Tom, will you stay the night with me and sleep so close that we are one person, no, but i will lay down on your sheets and taste you. there will be feathers of you on my tongue and then I will never forget you Tom, when we are in line at the convenience store can I put my hands in your back pockets and my lips and nose in your baseball shirt and feel the crook of your shoulder blade? no, but later you can lay against me and almost touch me and when i go i will leave my shirt for you to sleep in so that always at night you will be pressed up against the thought of me. Tom, if I weep and want to wait until you need me will you promise that someday you will need me? no, but i will sit in silence while you rage. you can knock the chairs down any mountain. i will always be the same and you will always wait. Tom, will you climb on top of the dumpster and steal the sun for me? It’s just hanging there and I want it. no, it will burn my fingers. no one can have the sun: it’s on loan from god. but i will draw a picture of it and send it to you from richmond and then you can smooth out the paper and you will have a piece of me as well as the sun Tom, it’s so hot here, and I think I’m being born. Will you come back from Richmond and baptise me with sex and cool water? i will come back from richmond. i will smooth the damp spiky hairs from the back of your wet neck and then i will lick the salt off it. then i will leave Tom, Richmond is so far away. How will I know how you love me? i have left you. that is how you will know

The other thing preferable about the weekday services is that no one is there against his will. That’s another distraction on Sundays. Who hasn’t suffered the experience of having an entire family seated in the pew in front of you, the children at war with each other and sandwiched between the mother and father who are forcing them to go to church? An aura of stale arguments almost visibly clings to the hasty clothing of the children. “This is the one morning I can sleep in!” the daughter’s linty sweater says. “I get so bored!” says the upturned collar of the son’s suit jacket. Indeed, the children imprisoned between their parents move constantly and restlessly in the pew; they are so crazy with self-pity, they seem ready to scream. The stern-looking father who occupies the aisle seat has his attention interrupted by fits of vacancy—an expression so perfectly empty accompanies his sternness and his concentration that I think I glimpse an underlying truth to the man’s churchgoing: that he is doing it only for the children, in the manner that some men with much vacancy of expression are committed to a marriage. When the children are old enough to decide about church for themselves, this man will stay home on Sundays. The frazzled mother, who is the lesser piece of bread to this family sandwich—and who is holding down that part of the pew from which the most unflattering view of the preacher in the pulpit is possible (directly under the preacher’s jowls)—is trying to keep her hand off her daughter’s lap. If she smooths out her daughter’s skirt only one more time, both of them know that the daughter will start to cry. The son takes from his suit jacket pocket a tiny, purple truck; the father snatches this away—with considerable bending and crushing of the boy’s fingers in the process. “Just one more obnoxious bit of behavior from you,” the father whispers harshly, “and you will be grounded—for the rest of the day.” “The whole rest of the day?” the boy says, incredulous. The apparent impossibility of sustaining unobnoxious behavior for even part of the day weighs heavily on the lad, and overwhelms him with a claustrophobia as impenetrable as the claustrophobia of church itself. The daughter has begun to cry. “Why is she crying?” the boy asks his father, who doesn’t answer. “Are you having your period?” the boy asks his sister, and the mother leans across the daughter’s lap and pinches the son’s thigh—a prolonged, twisting sort of pinch. Now he is crying, too. Time to pray! The kneeling pads flop down, the family flops forward. The son manages the old hymnal trick; he slides a hymnal along the pew, placing it where his sister will sit when she’s through praying. “Just one more thing,” the father mutters in his prayers. But how can you pray, thinking about the daughter’s period? She looks old enough to be having her period, and young enough for it to be the first time. Should you move the hymnal before she’s through praying and sits on it? Should you pick up the hymnal and bash the boy with it? But the father is the one you’d like to hit; and you’d like to pinch the mother’s thigh, exactly as she pinched her son. How can you pray?

I could stay,” he said. “I could leave tomorrow.” “No. I want you to go now.” “Do you?” “Yes.” “Ah, but what about what I want?” The softness in his voice made her lift her gaze. She would have answered him--how, she wasn’t sure--if Javelin’s attention hadn’t turned to him. The stallion began nuzzling Arin as if he were the horse’s favorite person in the world. Kestrel felt a pang of jealousy. Then she saw something that sent thoughts of jealousy and loneliness and want right out of her head, and just made her mad. Javelin was nibbling a certain part of Arin, waffling around a pocket exactly the right size to hold a-- “Winter apple,” Kestrel said. “Arin, you have been bribing my horse!” “Me? No.” “You have! No wonder he likes you so much.” “Are you sure it’s not because of my good looks and pleasing manners?” This was said lightly--not quite sarcastically, yet in a voice that nevertheless told Kestrel that he doubted he possessed either of these things. But he was pleasing. He pleased her. And she could never forget his beauty. She had learned it all too well. She blushed. “It’s not fair,” she said. He took in her rising color. His mouth curved. And although Kestrel wasn’t sure that he could interpret what effect he was having on her simply by standing there and saying the word pleasing, she knew that he always knew when he had an advantage. He pressed it. “Doesn’t your father’s theory of war include winning over the other side by offering sweets? No? An oversight, I think. I wonder…might I bribe you?” Kestrel’s fingers clenched. It probably looked like anger. It wasn’t. It was the instinctive gesture of someone dangerously tempted. “Open your hands, Little Fists,” said Arin. “Open your eyes. I haven’t stolen his love for you. Look.” It was true that in the course of their conversation, Javelin had turned away from Arin, disappointed by the empty pocket. The horse nosed Kestrel’s shoulder. “See?” Arin said. “He knows the difference between an easy mark and his mistress.

He is thinking if there is any way by which he can explain just how and what it is he suffers. He is wondering if there is anyone in the whole wide world with a heart big enough to comprehend what it is he wants to tell. There are so many little things to say first, and will anyone have the patience to listen to the end? Suffering is no one thing: it is composed of invisible atoms infinite in number, each one a universe in the great macrocosm of pain. He could begin anywhere, with anything, with a silly word even, a word such as flapdoodle, and he could erect a cathedral of staggering dimensions which would not occupy so much as a pocket in the crevice of the tiniest atom. To say nothing of the surrounding terrain, of the circumambient aura, of things like coast lines, volcanic craters, fathomless lagoons, pearl studs and tons of chicken feathers. The musician has an instrument to work with, the surgeon has his implements, the architect his plans, the general his pawns, the idiot his idiocy, but the one who is suffering has everything in the universe except relief. He can run out to the periphery a trillion times but the circle never straightens out. He knows every diameter but no egress. Every exit is closed, whether it be an inch away or a billion light years distant. You crash a gate made of arms and legs only to get a butt blow behind the ear. You pick up and run on bloody, sawed-off stumps, only to fall into an endless ravine. You sit in the very center of emptiness, whimpering inaudibly, and the stars blink at you. You fall into a coma, and just when you think you've found your way back to the womb they come after you with pick and shovel, with acetylene torches. Even if you found the place of death they would find a way to blow you out of it. You know time in all its curves and infidelities. You have lived longer than it takes to grow all the countless separate parts of a thousand new universes. You have watched them grow and fall apart again. And you are still intact, like a piece of music which goes on being played forever. The instruments wear out, and the players too, but the notes are eternal, and you are made of nothing but invisible notes which even the faintest zephyr can shake a tune out of.

He watched her pace toward him. She stopped just short of his chair and looked down at him. Her loose hair slipped over her shoulder. “I remember something. I’m not sure if it happened or not. Will you tell me?” “Yes,” he whispered. “I remember lying with you on the lawn of the imperial palace’s spring garden.” He shifted. Lamplight pulsed over his face. He shook his head. “I remember finding you in your suite.” This memory was coming to her now. It had a similar flavor as the last one. “I promised to tell you my secrets. You held a book. Or kindling? You were making a fire.” “That didn’t happen.” “I kissed you.” She touched the hollow at the base of his neck. His pulse was wild. “Not then,” he said finally. “But I have before.” There was a rush of images. It was as if the melody she’d imagined while lying in the dark had been dunked in the green liquor. All the cold stops gained heat and ran together. It was easy to remember Arin, especially now. Her hand slid to his chest. The cotton of his shirt was hot. “Your kitchens. A table. Honey and flour.” His heart slammed against her palm. “Yes.” “A carriage.” “Yes.” “A balcony.” Breath escaped him like a laugh. “Almost.” “I remember falling asleep in your bed when you weren’t here.” He pulled back slightly, searched her face. “That didn’t happen.” “Yes it did.” His mouth parted, but he didn’t speak. The blacks of his eyes were bright. She wondered what it would be like to give her body what it wanted. It knew something she didn’t. Her heart sped, her blood was lush in her veins. “The first day,” she said. “Last summer. Your hair was a mess. I wanted to sweep it back and make you meet my eyes. I wanted to see you.” His chest rose and fell beneath her hand. “I don’t know. I can’t--I don’t know what you wanted.” “I never said?” “No.” She lowered her mouth to his. She tasted him: the raw burn of liquor on his tongue. She felt him swallow, heard the low, dry sound of it. He pulled her down to him, tangled his hands in her hair, sucked the breath from her lips. She became uncertain whose breath was whose. He kissed her back, fingertips fanning across her face, then gone, nowhere. Then: a light touch along the curve of her hip, just barely. A stone skipping the surface of the water. “Strange,” he murmured into her mouth. She wasn’t listening. She was rippling, the sensation spreading wide. Stone on water, dimpled pockets of pressure. The wait for the stone to finally drop down. Suddenly she knew--or thought she knew--what he found strange as he traced where a dagger should have been. To see a part of her missing. She felt her missing pieces, the stark gaps. She was arrested by the thought (it pierced her, sharp and surreal) that she had become transparent, that if he touched her again his hand would go right through her, into air, into the empty spaces of who she was now.

Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole they hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzeny's body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes. I was paralyzed. I couldn't quite believe what was happening. Those books hadn't described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray. I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face. I looked over to Jenks who had on odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline hag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow pus from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame. Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. 'Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it.' I declined, turning away. Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the man's chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand. 'Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it... now!' And he stepped away. I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up. When I looked back, Skorzeny's hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake. Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasn't paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame.

Yeah, well, I--” He stops and his eyes shift behind me, wide in amusement. I turn my head to find a couple straight out of the 1980s at the end of the gelato line. They’re both sporting mullets and faded jeans. White sneakers. When I notice the matching red fanny packs, I have to look away. “You should take a picture of that,” he says, resting his forearms on the table. “What?” I lean in closer and speak just above a whisper. “No way.” “Do it!” he insists. “Five euros.” He digs into his pocket and clanks down five coins. I sneak a peek at the unsuspecting couple. The man is wiping sweat off his face with a hanky. They’re too close. I’d never get away with it. “I can’t,” I say. “Pansy.” With a grunt, I switch my camera on and set it to automatic. I raise it to my face and start to twist my upper body. “No, wait!” he says. “You’re doing it wrong.” I drop the camera to my lap and face him. “What?” “You’re too obvious. You need stealth. Watch and learn.” He retrieves a small point-and-shoot camera from his pocket and aims it toward me. “Say cheese!” he says so loudly that I’m sure everyone around us is looking. “Uh…cheese?” “Done.” He hits a few buttons and shows me the display screen. There they are. Looked right at him too. Clever. But I can’t let him win. “Wow. That’s pretty pixelated. What kind of setting do you have that on?” He frowns. “It’s just zoomed in.” “Oh.” I reach to zoom out, but he pulls it away too fast. “What? Why can’t I see? Did you actually take a picture of me or something?” “Stealth.” He shrugs and my cheeks turn pink. “Guess these are my winnings.” The coins scrape across the table as he scoops them up to put in his pocket. “You didn’t even give me a chance to redeem myself,” I defend. “Excuses, excuses. Just admit I’m the better photographer.” He laughs, standing to shoot his empty cup in the trash. “Finished?” I nod and he tosses mine too. “Braver maybe, but better? Your camera doesn’t have enough buttons.

40. From Those To Whom Much Is Given, Much Is Expected When I left school, I worked for six months running a series of self-defence classes around London to earn some money so I could go backpacking. Finally, I saved enough to travel to India, where I had always wanted to go and see the mighty Himalayas with my own eyes. I knew it would take my breath away. But it was the other things I witnessed in India that really blew my mind. In the back streets of Calcutta I saw sights that just should not happen: legless, blind, ragged bodies, lying in filth-strewn gutters, holding out their blistered arms to beg for a few rupees. I felt overwhelmed, inadequate and powerless - all at once. I sought out the mission run by Mother Teresa and saw there how simple things - cleanliness, calm, care and love - made a difference to those in need. These are not costly things to give, and the lesson I learnt was simple: that we all have it within our power to offer something to change a life, even if our pockets are empty. We’ve come to think of charity as being about big telethons or rock stars setting up foundations, but at its heart, charity is about small acts of kindness. No matter the circumstances in which you were brought up, no matter what your job or how much you earn, we all have the capacity to give something - whether it’s time, love or a listening ear to someone in need. And the thing to remember is this: don’t wait until you have more time, money or energy. Mother Teresa said: ‘Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.’ It is a great lesson, and the more we try to do this with whatever little we have, the more real success will gravitate toward us. People will love you back, your own sense of purpose and achievement will grow, and your life will have influence beyond the material. That is a great way to be known and to live your life. For the record: I am definitely still a work in progress on this one, but we all benefit from trying to aspire to this more. So look around you for those in need - you won’t have to look far - and your own life will grow in meaning. Success is not success unless you live this one.

Sure, Raoul, but let’s see your money.’ ‘Fuck you, Zachery Blubber.’ But he slapped twenty bucks down. Zak opened a beer, banged it on to the counter and sauntered back for the bourbon. ‘So how’s LA, man? You get all that fancy gear there?’ Raoul shrugged. His nose was running and he sniffed as Zak leaned against the bar, sliding the bourbon glass forwards. ‘Cool, it’s cool.’ ‘You look like you need to chill out.’ Raoul knocked back the bourbon and reached for the beer. ‘Your brothers are workin’ out back.’ ‘Uncle Fryer around?’ ‘Sleepin’, like always at this time. Place was jumpin’ last night, he played so much he got his big old lips swollen up, but he sure as hell can play that beat-up bugle o’ his.’ Raoul sniffed again, wiping his nose with his shirt cuff. He took out a thick roll of notes and peeled off another twenty. ‘Same again, have one yourself.’ Zak eyed the wad, and slowly moved back along the bar. ‘Don’t mind if I do, brother, don’t mind if I do.’ Raoul had to wait a while as a couple of customers needed refills. He was beginning to get the shakes and wondered why the hell he’d come back. He’d get more than the shakes when he showed his face back home. What had seemed like a good idea was now beginning to pale. Zak passed another beer and bourbon along, holding up a glass to indicate he’d taken his drink and started to chinwag with two old boys huddled at the far end of the bar. ‘Zak, eh, Zak man, come on down here a second, will ya?’ Raoul said loudly, gulping down his beer. ‘What you want?’ said Zak, handing out beers and tossing the empties into a crate beneath the bar. He kind of knew, so he opened a drawer under the till and took out a packet. ‘This what you want, bro?’ Raoul put his hand over the plastic bag. Zak leaned forward, whispering that it was good home-grown gear, he could vouch for it. ‘You got any skins?’ Raoul asked, peeling off fifty dollars. ‘Shit, man, what you want me to do, smoke it for you?’ He reached into the back pocket of his pants and tossed down a squashed pack of rolling

the effect of the observer on the quantum field causes reality to reorganize according to the observation. This means that a newly observed reality descends through the frequency levels below the quantum, becoming dense in material reality.23 The nonobserved information becomes “lost” if it doesn’t qualify as “real” or desirable to the observer. It is not eliminated; instead, the not-selected potential slips into a pocket of “elsewhere.” Conceivably, we can get it back. As Lloyd explains, we can access lost data by “flipping a qubit,” a code phrase that means we can apply a magnetic field to force energy to shift from one state to another.24 We have established that the subtle layer is atop the physical and that the etheric layer of subtle energies is magnetic in nature. Could it be that the information we cannot find—perhaps, the data that could make a sick person well—is lingering a plane above us? We’ve one more law to face: the third law of thermodynamics. Experiments with absolute zero provide a new perspective on it, one that coaxes an understanding of subtle energy. Absolute zero is the point at which particles have minimum energy, called zero-point energy. Researchers including Dr. Hal Puthoff have identified this zero-point energy with zero-point field, a mesh of light that encompasses all of reality. (This field is further explained in Part III.) This field of light is a vacuum state, but it is not empty; rather, it is a sea of electromagnetic energy, and possibly, virtual particles—ideas that can become real. Conceivably, energy should stand completely still at absolute zero, which would mean that information would become permanently imprisoned. Research on zero-point energy, however, reveals that nearing zero-point, atomic motion stops, but energy continues. This means that “lost information” is not really lost. Even when frozen, it continues to “vibrate” in the background. The pertinent questions are these: How do we “read” this background information? How do we apply it? These queries are similar to those we might ask about “hidden” information. How do we access suppressed but desirable data? The answers lie in learning about subtle structures, for these dwell at the interfaces between the concrete and the higher planes. Operate within the subtle structures, and you can shift a negative reality to a positive one, without losing energy in the process.

MIT physicist Seth Lloyd supports the idea of other worldly portals in his book Programming the Universe. Quantum mechanics has proven that an electron is not only allowed to be in two places at once—it is required to be. Certain particles not only spin in two directions at the same time, but have to do so.21 At really high speeds, atoms require more information to describe their movements, and therefore they have more entropy.22 However, an observer affects the outcome of whatever he or she is observing. As explained in the book The Orb Project, the effect of the observer on the quantum field causes reality to reorganize according to the observation. This means that a newly observed reality descends through the frequency levels below the quantum, becoming dense in material reality.23 The nonobserved information becomes “lost” if it doesn’t qualify as “real” or desirable to the observer. It is not eliminated; instead, the not-selected potential slips into a pocket of “elsewhere.” Conceivably, we can get it back. As Lloyd explains, we can access lost data by “flipping a qubit,” a code phrase that means we can apply a magnetic field to force energy to shift from one state to another.24 We have established that the subtle layer is atop the physical and that the etheric layer of subtle energies is magnetic in nature. Could it be that the information we cannot find—perhaps, the data that could make a sick person well—is lingering a plane above us? We’ve one more law to face: the third law of thermodynamics. Experiments with absolute zero provide a new perspective on it, one that coaxes an understanding of subtle energy. Absolute zero is the point at which particles have minimum energy, called zero-point energy. Researchers including Dr. Hal Puthoff have identified this zero-point energy with zero-point field, a mesh of light that encompasses all of reality. (This field is further explained in Part III.) This field of light is a vacuum state, but it is not empty; rather, it is a sea of electromagnetic energy, and possibly, virtual particles—ideas that can become real. Conceivably, energy should stand completely still at absolute zero, which would mean that information would become permanently imprisoned. Research on zero-point energy, however, reveals that nearing zero-point, atomic motion stops, but energy continues. This means that “lost information” is not really lost. Even when frozen, it continues to “vibrate” in the background. The pertinent questions are these: How do we “read” this background information? How do we apply it? These queries are similar to those we might ask about “hidden” information. How do we access suppressed but desirable data? The answers lie in learning about subtle structures, for these dwell at the interfaces between the concrete and the higher planes. Operate within the subtle structures, and you can shift a negative reality to a positive one, without losing energy in the process.

What the fuck happened between you two?” Logan asks as soon as the door closes. I shrug. Logan is famous for his shrugs. He should accept mine. But he doesn’t. Instead, he punches me in the shoulder. Shit, that hurt. “What the fuck?” I ask. “What happened?” he asks. He looks straight into my eyes. “Nothing,” I say. I shake my head. “Not a fucking thing.” “Dude, you had a pillow shoved in your lap, and you were getting off her bed when we walked in. Something happened.” He shoves my shoulder, almost knocking me over. Logan’s a big boy. A little bigger than me, and I’m a big guy. “Not to mention that she looked like she’d just been fucked.” I stop and turn to face him. I lay both lands flat on his chest and shove him as hard as I can. “Don’t ever fucking talk about her like that again,” I warn. Logan takes a few steps back. Then he grins. “It’s about fucking time,” he says. He holds up a hand to high five me. “Fuck you,” I say instead, and I keep walking toward my dorm. I can’t get there fast enough. “Did you kiss her?” he asks. He grins at me again, and I feel a smile tugging at my own lips. But it doesn’t last for more than a minute. His joviality isn’t contagious. “I was about to…. Then you guys busted in,” I admit. “She wants you, man. She’s got it as bad as you do. Trust me.” I shake my head. “She doesn’t.” “She does.” He claps a hand on my shoulder. “She told Emily. Emily told me.” He pauses and then says, “You’re welcome.” “What did she say?” I ask. I probably don’t want to know. “She said she wants to have your babies.” He jumps back when I go to punch him, and he laughs. “Shut up,” I say. “This is serious.” “Why’s it so serious all of a sudden?” Logan asks.  “This shit’s been going on between you two for a long time. Why does it suddenly matter so much?” “The contest is today. They’re raffling off a kiss from her.” I heave a sigh. “One lucky winner is going to get to kiss the woman I love. In front of everybody.” “Oh, fuck,” Logan breathes. “That’s shit.” “I asked her not to go,” I confess. “So, go buy all the tickets,” he says with a shrug, as though he just solved world poverty or AIDS. “It doesn’t work like that. You have to guess the number of jelly beans in her jar. If you get the wrong number, you don’t get anything. If you get the right number, you get to kiss her.” “So, we need to figure out how many jelly beans are in her jar,” he says simply. He looks at me. “Did you see the jar?” I nod. “It’s a pickle jar.” I hold out my hands to show him the size. “The big kind.” “So we need a jar that size, and we need to fill it with jelly beans and then count them. At least then you can get close, right?” I scrub a hand down my face. “This is stupid. I’ll never get it. Every guess costs a dollar.” I reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet. It’s nearly empty. “You’re just going to let somebody else kiss her?” “If I’m not there, I won’t see it.” I shrug my shoulders, trying to hide the fact that I feel as if I’m being gutted. He stares at me. He doesn’t say anything. “If it were Emily, I’d buy every fucking pickle and every damn jelly bean in the state of New York. There’s no way my girl would kiss some asshole.” “You’re right,” I say. “We need to go to the store.” Hope swells inside me. Do I have a chance? I won’t know until I try, I guess. Logan

Anecdotal Spores: The Crazy Uncle Late one cold and drizzly winter night while I was traveling through the mountains, I stopped in a roadside bar for a beer and a sandwich and decided to sit at the counter, which was empty except for a very fat man at the far end. The waitress was young and thin, with a bad complexion. She had glasses and wore her hair in pigtails. She was also a nervous blinker, blinking with every word she spoke as she asked what I wanted. I decided that a beer might make me too sleepy to drive, so I ordered a coffee, along with a bacon cheeseburger. When I’d ordered, I glanced down at the fat man and saw that he was staring at me. I nodded, then turned back and looked at the mirror behind the whiskey bottles. But with that first brief glance there seemed to be something oddly familiar about him. So after a moment I glanced back, and he was still sitting there staring at me. He was dressed in an old-fashioned shirt and tie and had a thick cluster of pens in his shirt pocket. Finally he said, “Don’t you recognize me?” “No, can’t say I do,” I told him. He nodded sadly. “How can that be? I’m your uncle.” I frowned at him a moment, then turned back and looked at the mirror. A moment later he said, speaking to nobody, “His own uncle, and he doesn’t know me.” Finally, sighing, he got up and ambled to the men’s room. The waitress came back to pour my coffee. Blinking, she said, “Don’t mind him; he’s crazy. He thinks he’s everybody’s uncle.” I shook my head. “Yes, but he does look familiar, somehow.” “People always say that, too,” the waitress said, blinking the words at me before going back to the serving slot in the wall to see if my bacon cheeseburger was ready.

If the human race ever wishes to master time travel then the answer is through chemical and not mechanical means. Speed is time travel. It will pilfer away at the space-time around you without your consent, propelling you forward through time. The human body is a vehicle of flux. It is exhilarating to move rhythmically, pulsing, stepping through pockets of your existence in fluid motions. The time that speed steals from you, it gives back with interest, cold and hard on a Monday morning. It brings with it a terrifying despair that creeps upon you. It is a black, slow-motion suicide. The ceiling begins to drip and ooze grey-brown sludge. Aural hallucinations, the demons of psychosis, speak wordless words of pure dread... Sometimes I would laugh and giggle hysterically at inane nonsensical stories that would play out in my mind. I would watch them unfold, like a lucid dream, weird images, Boschian forms, twisted nightmares... And I would weep. I would weep for nothing with salty tears, rivers of anguish and existential pain running down my face, dripping quietly onto the carpet. Day after day, I would unravel myself, dissect, and analyse my life over and over until I was exhausted and insane. Speed is not an insightful drug. It will not delude you into a false sense of spirituality like hallucinogens. It is the aftermath and the come down from speed that will rip open your ego and show you the bare, horrible bones of yourself. It will open the beautiful black doorway inside you and it will show you nothing. Through the darkness of internal isolation, the amphetamine comedown will show you no god, no spirituality, no soul, just your own perishable flesh, and your own animal self-preservation. It will show you clearly just how ugly you really are inside. In the emptiness of yourself, there is only the knowledge of your eventual death. When you have truly faced yourself and recognised yourself as purely animal then you become liberated from the societal pretence that you are above or better than any other creature. You are a human animal. You are naturally motivated to be selfish. Everything you do, every act you partake of, is in its essence an act of survival. No act of the human-animal happens without the satisfaction of the ego’s position in existence…

of my jacket pocket. By this point, with my full workday and tonight’s party of all parties to plan, I was more surprised when it wasn’t going off. A sound, deafening even by midtown Manhattan standards, hammered into my ears as I made the corner. Was it a jackhammer? A construction pile driver? Of course not, I thought, as I spotted a black kid squatting on the sidewalk, playing drums on an empty Spackle bucket. Luckily, I also spotted my lunch appointment, Aidan Beck, at the edge of the crowded street performance. Without preamble, I hooked elbows with the fair, scruffily handsome young man and pulled him into the chic Hudson. At the top of the neon-lit escalator, a concierge who looked like one of the happy, shiny cast members of High School Musical smiled from behind the Carrara marble check-in desk. “Hi. I called twenty minutes ago,” I said. “I’m Mrs. Smith. This is Mr. Smith. We’d like a room with a large double bed. The floor or view doesn’t matter. I’m paying cash. I’m really in a rush.” The clerk took in my sweating face and the contrast between my sexy office attire and my much younger companion’s faded jeans and suede jacket with seeming approval. “Let’s get you to your room, then,” the über-happy concierge said without missing a beat.

I’m leaving the army,” he said. Lily felt hope leap within her breast. Maybe Caleb had changed his mind; maybe he wanted to be a farmer after all. She held her breath, waiting for him to go on. “I want to go back to Pennsylvania.” Lily’s hopes plummeted. She could only stare at Caleb in misery. “I see,” she said finally, with dignity. Caleb reached into the pocket of his uniform coat and brought out a small box. “I want you to go with me, Lily,” he told her, setting the box in front of her. She opened it, hands trembling, to find an exquisite diamond ring inside. The larger center stone glittered and winked at her from amid the surrounding smaller gems. Her finger fairly burned, waiting to wear that ring. “I can’t,” she said resolutely, snapping the box closed and shoving it back toward Caleb. He leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice. “Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t care for me, Lily, because I know you do. Yesterday you gave yourself to me in a woodshed, remember?” Lily colored to recall the wanton way she’d behaved, and she lowered her eyes. “I do care,” she answered, “but I don’t want to leave my land, and I don’t want a husband.” “You’d marry me if I agreed to stay and farm that damnable land with you?” Again hope stirred in Lily’s heart. “Yes.” “You just said you didn’t want a husband.” Lily bit her lower lip. “If we were going to live in the same house, we’d have to be married, wouldn’t we?” Caleb pushed the ring box back across the table. “Has it ever occurred to you that I could promise to live on the farm, marry you, and then take you anywhere I damn well please, whether you want to go or not?” “You’re not making a very good case for marriage,” Lily answered, ignoring the ring box and taking a steadying sip of her coffee. The truth was, she had never once considered the possibility Caleb had suggested; she knew he was honest to a fault. “Damn it,” he whispered, “I should have done it. I should have told you I’d homestead with you and then married you!” “I would never have forgiven you, and you know it. It would have soured everything between us.” “Not everything,” Caleb argued, making Lily blush again. “Must every conversation we have come back to that?” Caleb took the ring from the box, and then he lifted Lily’s left hand and shoved the diamond unceremoniously onto her finger. “I think the fact that you would probably let me make love to you damn near anywhere has some bearing on what we’re talking about, yes!” Lily looked around furtively to see if anyone was listening. Fortunately, the restaurant was nearly empty, and the few other diners were sitting some distance away. “There is absolutely no need for you to be so arrogant,” she fretted, trying to pull the ring off. It was just a tiny bit too small and wouldn’t come over her knuckle. Caleb’s amber eyes were glittering with triumph when she looked up at him. “Perfect fit,” he said. Lily pushed back her chair. “I’ll get it off if I have to have my finger amputated,” she replied, preparing to leave. “Get out of that chair and there will be a scene you’ll remember until the day you die,” Caleb promised. Lily sat down again. “I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want to go to Pennsylvania, so why can’t you just leave me alone?” “Because I love you,” Caleb answered, and he looked as surprised to find himself saying the words as Lily was to hear them. “I beg your pardon?” “You heard me, Lily.” “You said you loved me. Did you mean it?” Caleb drove one hand through his hair. “Yes.” Lily stared at him and stopped trying to get the ring off her finger. “You’re just saying that. It’s a trick of some kind.” Caleb laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Believe me, it’s no trick—it’s a fact I’m going to have to live with for the next fifty years.” In

You like it with more cream than sugar, am I right? And my nose tells me the kitchen sent up a pekoe, which I’m guessing is more to your taste than Darjeeling. Here.” She watched bemused as he prepared her tea then passed her a cup and saucer. “Drink up. If I’d thought to bring my pocket pistol, we could be adding a dollop of medicinal courage. That might put the roses back in your cheeks.” He didn’t fix himself a cup; instead he studied her, which necessitated that she study her tea. He didn’t chatter; he let her finish her tea in silence. It was the smallest, most mundane pleasure in the world, to sip a cup of tea fixed just for her, but it was a comfort. “I am not myself today.” She set the empty cup and saucer back on the tray. “I apologize for the lack of roses in my cheeks.” “You, my dear, are cranky.” He sounded amused. When he reached out and tucked a lock of Maggie’s hair behind one ear, she was not amused in the least. “While I appreciate your solicitude, Mr. Hazlit, it isn’t necessary.” And

intricate patterns on the pavement. Her enormous brown eyes glittered with happiness at the attention she had attracted. Sarah wasn’t the only passerby who had stopped to watch, entranced. Then the song ended, and the gathered crowd applauded. The girl bobbed a curtsey and looked around expectantly. In a moment, coins appeared, fished from pockets and purses and offered in tribute. The coins disappeared again as if by magic, spirited away by little fingers as nimble as the little feet had been and deposited into the pocket of her dress. While the crowd disbursed, the girl turned and hurried back to the man who had produced the music. That was when Sarah recalled her purpose in being here. The child was emptying her pocket and giving the coins to a handsome youth who sat on a small stool with his back against the building. He held the organ between his knees, resting on a small stand. He wore a dark shirt and trousers and had a red bandanna tied rakishly at his throat. He looked so perfect that Sarah almost didn’t notice the wooden crutches tucked discreetly between his stool and the wall. Finally, she saw the pant leg pinned up at the ankle. She’d never expected Georgio to have a child, which was why she’d been so slow to realize she’d found him. Taking advantage of this lull, she stepped over to where the man and the girl were conversing in Italian. There seemed to be some question about whether she’d given him all the coins she’d collected. “Georgio?” Sarah tried. He looked up from beneath the bill of his small cap. His eyes were dark and liquid, his smile big and bright and charming. “Si, Signorina, do you want to see the little one dance?” His English was very good, probably honed from conversing with his customers. “No, although she dances very well,” Sarah added, giving the child an approving smile, in case she didn’t understand the compliment. “I wanted to ask you about your sister Emilia.” His charming smile vanished, and the dark eyes grew wary. “She is dead,” he said very carefully. “I know. I’m very sorry.” “Who are you and what do you want?” he asked suspiciously. When he frowned, Sarah realized how much he looked like his mother. “My name is Sarah Brandt, and I met Emilia at the Prodigal Son Mission.” His expression hardened from wariness into anger. Plainly, none of the Donato family had any love for the mission. “She was such a lovely girl, and she was trying very hard to become a respectable young woman,” Sarah hurried on, wishing she had some idea how Georgio felt about his sister. Seeing that the grown-ups were going to talk a bit, the little girl sank down onto the pavement with a weary sigh and leaned back against the wall. Sarah wondered vaguely how many times she

Pale lights illuminate The Seven’s inner chamber. Once bright, the lamps are overgrown, dimmed by a sheet of stone. The room is octagonal, one side for the supplicant, unadorned. Six others each house a figure, statue-like, covered from head to toe in a thick layer of rock. All appear human shaped, with discernible wings, their postures neutral, dead. The seventh alcove lies empty. The Vagrant holds the sword up, letting it hum, calling, calling. As if returning from a dream, The Seven respond, slowly, sonorously. Splitting the shells that cover them, yawning into life. One by one, they catch the call and return it, till the harmony swells, reverberating from the walls and leaping up, vanishing into the fathomless, ceilingless dark above. Beautiful sounds mature, becoming words, musical, passed from one to the other, filling the chamber and the Vagrant’s ears. ‘Mourning has become morning, and we rejoice …’ ‘We rejoice in the proximity of your flame once more …’ ‘Once more we are Seven …’ ‘Are Seven together, come …’ ‘Come and join with us …’ ‘Join with us your light, diminished but still bright.’ Six arms drift out, gesturing to the last alcove, inviting. Neither Vagrant nor sword move. An eye studies the chamber, pausing at each alcove, noting the blades housed there, buried beneath layers of stone, useless. Rage simmers between sword and Vagrant. He takes a lock of hair from an inner pocket, throws it down on the floor between them. The sword lowers to point at it, then sweeps across the figures, then makes a hard stab towards the doors. Six faces freeze as the joyous echoes of song die out. The Vagrant swallows in a throat suddenly dry. Vesper dares a quick peek from behind the Vagrant’s coat. Alpha, of The Seven, sings out. The note begins wondrous but imperfect, the others soon match him. ‘We see now your pain, most furious …’ ‘Most furious you are and desperate to fight …’ ‘To fight once more, your desire …’ ‘Your desire we grant, go forth, take a second flame to our enemies …’ Voices come together, their force rocking the Vagrant backwards until he is pinned to the wall. Vesper holds his hand tightly, little feet rising from the floor. ‘Do not stop …’ ‘Stop when the cancer …’ ‘Cancer is cut …’ ‘Cut from the bones …’ ‘Bones and flesh …’ ‘Flesh of the land …’ ‘Land is clean!’ The Vagrant closes his eyes, squeezes them tight. He braces himself against the sound, pulling Vesper behind him raising the sword in front. Silvered wings unfurl protectively, shielding his face. An eye widens, blazing with indignation. ‘Then …’ ‘Then, then and only then …’ ‘Only then will you be free …’ ‘Be free to return to us …’ ‘Return to us and rejoice …’ ‘Rejoice for true, complete again. Immaculate.’ Six go quiet, demands echoing after. Vesper’s feet touch floor again and she wraps herself around a comforting leg. In the Vagrant’s hand, the sword trembles, humming dangerously. He takes a deep breath. From the depths of his stomach something is forged, travelling inevitably, gaining force as it goes, following tubes behind ribs, up through the chest, into the throat, teeth parting, allowing it outside. The Vagrant opens his eyes, they are full of weariness, disgust, conviction. ‘No.

And he said... ...who will call you friend when your pockets are empty?

Wiremu tried shoving the handful of notes into his trouser pocket. The movement did not go unnoticed. ‘I have no other debt with you and, as I said, I was just leaving,’ Wiremu said, getting up to leave. Jowl reached out, clasping the smaller man on his arm, digging his fingers in, dragging Wiremu back into his seat. ‘The thing is, Mister Kepa — oh yes, I know who you are. I’ve heard all about you. I know more about you than your mother does. See, you interfered with my family business, and the Jowl brothers don’t take kindly to others interfering in our business. We’re good churchgoing folk who abide by the word of Lord Jesus our Saviour, but we also need money to live, to follow the word of God. And when you owe the Jowl brothers, you pay the debt. You, sir, are well overdue on paying what you owe.’ Wiremu looked around the bar, trying to catch the eye of anyone watching, hoping they’d intervene, but no one would meet his eye. Since Jowl had sat at his table, most of the other patrons had decided they had things to do elsewhere. The room was almost empty. No one would help him; he was on his own. Resigned to his fate, Wiremu replied, ‘Fine. How much do I owe you?’ ‘You owe me for the bottles of liquor which smashed, two shillings ought to deal with that.’ Wiremu exhaled in relief. Two shillings was fine, it left him enough for the trip down country. He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out the cash. Joe changed his grip to Wiremu’s wrist, ‘I said two shillings would cover the bottles which were broke, but that won’t cover the loss of the girl.’ Wiremu frowned, ‘What

Giving up things you don't have is easy. It's easy to become a monk when your pockets are empty. It’s easy to become a minion when your dreams are empty. The real sacrifice is to give up something you love from every core of your heart.

Ciao, Violetta.” The sound of his voice, low and almost caressing, is such a shock that for a moment I think I’ve hallucinated hearing it. But as I jerk my head back, I see his shoes, his jeans, and swiftly I swing my legs under me, scrabbling for a foothold in the squishy mud of the riverbank, digging in my toes, and stand up waist-high in the water. Luca has bent his long legs now, and is sitting down in front of me, halfway down the bank on a stone outcropping, so we’re almost level. I stare at him, still disbelieving. “It was you!” I blurt out, and then feel stupid. “Cosa?” He lifts his dark brows. I can see his face clearly in the moonlight, the pale skin, the perfect bone structure, the black lock of hair that falls over his forehead, inky-dark. “Before,” I say. “Up by the club. You were smoking.” He nods. “Which you think is a disgusting habit,” he observes, amusement in his voice. “Yes, I do,” I say firmly, glad of the way the conversation is going; ticking him off is much easier than…anything else. “It’s revolting. Schifoso,” I add, having learned the word in Italian. “Bene.” He pulls the packet from his jeans pocket, raises it to show me, and then, quite unexpectedly, releases it, his long fingers empty, the packet falling into the river beside me. “No more cigarettes,” he says. “Since you say they are schifoso.” “You’re stopping? Just like that?” I fish out the packet before it becomes so waterlogged it sinks, and put it on the grass. He shrugs. “Perchè no?” I swallow. “You shouldn’t just throw things in the water like that. It’s bad for the environment,” I say, sticking with the severe, ticked-off voice, as it makes me feel safe. If I lose this voice with him, I’m in much deeper, more dangerous waters than this pretty little river. “Mi scusi,” he says lightly, an apology with not a flicker of contrition in his voice. “You are good for me, Violetta. The only one who tells me when I do wrong.” When he calls me by the Italian version of my name, I can’t help it: I feel like I’m melting. Dissolving, helpless, gone.

He is thinking if there is any way by which he can explain just how and what it is he suffers. He is wondering if there is anyone in the whole wide world with a heart big enough to comprehend what it is he wants to tell. There are so many little things to say first, and will anyone have the patience to listen to the end? Suffering is no one thing: it is composed of invisible atoms infinite in number, each one a universe in the great macrocosm of pain. He could begin anywhere, with anything, with a silly word even, a word such as flapdoodle, and he could erect a cathedral of staggering dimensions which would not occupy so much as a pocket in the crevice of the tiniest atom. To say nothing of the surrounding terrain, of the circumambient aura, of things like coast lines, volcanic craters, fathomless lagoons, pearl studs and tons of chicken feathers. The musician has an instrument to work with, the surgeon has his implements, the architect his plans, the general his pawns, the idiot his idiocy, but the one who is suffering has everything in the universe except relief. He can run out to the periphery a trillion times but the circle never straightens out. He knows every diameter but no egress. Every exit is closed, whether it be an inch away or a billion light years distant. You crash a gate made of arms and legs only to get a butt blow behind the ear. You pick up and run on bloody, sawed-off stumps, only to fall into an endless ravine. You sit in the very center of emptiness, whimpering inaudibly, and the stars blink at you. You fall into a coma, and just when you think you've found your way back to the womb they come after you with pick and shovel, with acetylene torches. Even if you found the place of death they would find a way to blow you out of it. You know time in all its curves and infidelities. You have lived longer than it takes to grow all the countless separate parts of a thousand new universes. You have watched them grow and fall apart again. And you are still intact, like a piece of music which goes on being played forever. The instruments wear out, and the players too, but the notes are eternal, and you are made of nothing but invisible notes which even the faintest zephyr can shake a tune out of.

Lyndon Johnson knew this when he quipped, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” We are a country that imagines