about whether we are, too.” “Among us friends, let’s be honest,” Kelly said. “About a third of the things the president wants us to do are flat-out stupid. Another third would be impossible to implement and wouldn’t even solve the problem. And a third of them would be flat-out illegal.” On October 18, the chief went to the Oval and unloaded on Trump, telling the president he simply didn’t have the legal authority to do what he wanted to at the border. The best option was to focus on getting Congress to reform our broken immigration system. Trump was unmoved. If his people were going to defy him, he’d empower new ones. The president tapped his son-in-law to take on immigration. Jared was in charge, Trump said. Kirstjen and I were sitting in Kelly’s office when the chief came back from down the hall. I’d never seen him so mad. “Fuck him,” Kelly roared. “I’m done here. I’m leaving, going home, and quitting this job.” He walked into the hallway to tell his Secret Service agents to get his motorcade ready. “I quit.” Back in the office again for a brief moment—briefcase in hand—Kelly picked up the phone and got Jared on the line. “POTUS says you’ve got it figured out. So fuck you. It’s on you now, Jared. I’m out.” He slammed the phone. With that, Kelly left the West Wing. I cleared the secretary’s calendar the next day. We convened a group of advisors at a private location outside of Washington to talk about an exit plan. Arriving separately at an empty building in rural Virginia, we dumped our electronic devices in a box in the entryway, unsure whether our phones might be monitored. The administration felt increasingly like an autocracy. Kirstjen kicked off the conversation. She’d talked to Kelly, and despite storming out of the White House, he hadn’t officially made up his mind about resigning. He was leaning that direction and was considering whether to implode the administration by bringing others with him. “What’s our game plan?” Kirstjen asked the group. I made my position clear. A mass resignation would be a powerful statement about Trump’s behavior. It would be impossible for Republicans—and the country—to look away if Trump’s top lieutenants left in a blaze of glory. It would be “the second burning of the White House,” I noted (the British literally torched the building during the War of 1812). Others were considering leaving, too. We ran through the names. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Intelligence Director Dan Coats. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joseph Dunford. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. A surprising name came up: First Lady Melania Trump. I didn’t press for further details, but one attendee asserted that FLOTUS would actually consider leaving her husband if enough key officials quit. Not everyone agreed quitting was the right approach. My colleague DHS Chief of Staff Chad Wolf remained largely silent, while a communications aide warned the secretary that Trump would blame us if we quit and caused the GOP to lose control of Congress.


into their cotton vitals, no harsh words or blows were ever given them, no neglect ever saddened the heart or the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed with an affection which never failed. One forlorn fragment of dollanity had belonged to Jo and, having led a tempestuous life, was left a wreck in the rag bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued by Beth and taken to her refuge. Having no top to its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If any had known the care lavished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. She brought it bits of bouquets, she read to it, took it out to breathe fresh air, hidden under her coat, she sang it lullabies and never went to be without kissing its dirty face and whispering tenderly, "I hope you'll have a good night, my poor dear." Beth had her troubles as well as the others, and not being an angel but a very human little girl, she often `wept a little weep' as Jo said, because she couldn't take music lessons and have a fine piano. She loved music so dearly, tried so hard to learn, and practiced away so patiently at the jingling old instrument, that it did seem as if someone (not to hint Aunt March) ought to help her. Nobody did, however, and nobody saw Beth wipe the tears off the yellow keys, that wouldn't keep in tune, when she was all alone. She sang like a little lark about her work, never was too tired for Marmee and the girls, and day after day said hopefully to herself, " I know I'll get my music some time, if I'm good." There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind. If anybody had asked Amy what the greatest trial of her life was, she would have answered at once, "My nose." When she was a baby,Jo had accidently dropped her into the coal hod, and Amy insisted that the fall had ruined her nose forever. It was not big nor red, like poor `Petrea's', it was only rather flat, and all the pinching in the world could not give it an aristocratic point. No one minded it but herself, and it was doing its best to grow, but Amy felt deeply the want of a Grecian nose, and drew whole sheets of handsome ones to console herself. "Little Raphael," as her sisters called her, had a decided talent for drawing, and was never so happy as when copying flowers, designing fairies, or illustrating stories with queer specimens of art. Her teachers complained


the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I was something very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof. Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing in the world--the strangest, that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with a piece of work--for I was something or other that could sit-- on the old stone bench which overlooked the pond; and in this position I began to take in with certitude, and yet without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person. The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour. There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, in the conviction I from one moment to another found myself forming as to what I should see straight before me and across the lake as a consequence of raising my eyes. They were attached at this juncture to the stitching in which I was engaged, and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move them till I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up my mind what to do. There was an alien object in view--a figure whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance, then the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman's boy, from the village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude as I was conscious--still even without looking-- of its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than that these things should be the other things that they absolutely were not. Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, I transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, was about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with the wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; and I held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is something more dire in this, I feel, than in


out drinking, and they were sneaking around campus, so who knows what else they did.” Mike looked confused, thick brows coming together. “I guess the point was she wasn’t with us.” “But it’s funny,” I said, “that Robbie took that risk.” “He knew he had nothing to hide. That makes it easier.” “I know from Sakina that you guys got to the mattresses in clusters,” I lied. “I mean, that only makes sense. You were probably slower than everyone else with your leg. But when they ask about it, you just—you simplify it, right? If you all walked there together, it gets the gist across better.” “Wait, is that what she said on the stand?” “I doubt it. I mean, if anything, they’re interested in when people left.” “Right.” He relaxed back in his chair. “I don’t know. In the days afterward, we kept checking with each other, making sure we had our story straight. Not like we were making it up, but just things like whose idea was it, how long were we there. Honestly, we decided together to say it was only drinking and cigarettes. There was definitely some pot, but that wasn’t in the photos, so why bring it up?” “Right,” I said. “Why would pot be relevant?” But he didn’t seem to catch my sarcasm. I refilled his glass, even though it wasn’t empty. I topped mine off just a millimeter. I’d barely drunk any. As I leaned back on the pillows, I stretched my arms overhead, a move I’d learned men took as egregious flirting even though I never meant it that way; I just had tight shoulders. But I lingered with my arms up, stretching to the right and the left. In the aftermath of my latest Yahav relapse, I’d had the unflattering realization that I had never once, in my life, gone after a man who was fully available. In my early twenties, I honed my skills on married men, men whose rejections and eventual departures it would be impossible to take personally. Even Jerome wasn’t someone I ever possessed completely, or wanted to. And look who I’d pined after at Granby: the hottest guy on the ski team, and Kurt Fucking Cobain. Men who could never hurt me, because I could remain invisible to them. (“Do you think this might have to do with your father and brother?” asks every new shrink, tentatively, as if it weren’t glaringly obvious.) Now I said, to the boy in whose honor I’d once borrowed a library map of Connecticut just so I could look up the precise location of his street in New Canaan: “You know what the clock tower made me think of, the other day, was all the spaces people used to go to make out. Or smoke.” He laughed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh, man. I was never a smoker, so I wouldn’t know about that.” “Right. You only knew the make-out places, and I only knew the smoking places.” “You never got busy on campus?” “Not once.” It


came again. She heard her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest. Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mother sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest--stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was Thesaurus backwardness: (n) reserve, darlingly, sweetly, petly, lustre, splendor, luster, brilliancy, abnormality, amentia, stupidity, expensively, belovedly, intimately, resplendence, luxury, grandeur, arrearage, diffidence, bashfulness, highly, heartfeltly, lovely. grandness, brilliance. shyness, lag, mongoloid, drops: (n) tear. streak: (n, v) ray, dash, mark, flash; subnormality. ripening: (n) ageing, maturement, (adj, n) stripe; (n) band, beam, run, comprehend: (v) grasp, catch, see, development, mellowing, aging, bar, groove, gleam. comprise, appreciate, feel, sense, maturing, mature, growing, growth, sunbeam: (n) sunshine, shaft, sunray, apperceive, read; (adj, v) understand; gestation, organic process. beam, shaft of light, sunlight, ray of (n, v) embrace. ANTONYMS: (v) shrunk: (adj) contracted, wizened, light, moonbeam, light beam, light, mistake, misapprehend, exclude, withered, shrivelled, shriveled, beam of light. misunderstand, misconceive. wizen, insipid, drawn grain, wearish. troubles: (n) dilemma, evils, harms, dearly: (adv) affectionately, preciously, splendour: (n) pomp, magnificence, ills. 198 The Scarlet Letter pleased with their wild flavour. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merriment--for the squirrel is such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods--so he chattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was a last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively at Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, or renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said--but here the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable--came up and smelt of Pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognised a kindred wilderness in the human child.% And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The Bowers appeared to know it, and one and another whispered as she passed, "Adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child,


crossed the threshold, appeared to delight her; and every circumstance that took place about her, except the preparing for the burial, and the presence of the mourners. I thought she was half silly, from her behaviour while that went on; she ran into her chamber, and made me come with her, though I should have been dressing the children; and there she sat shivering and clasping her hands, and asking repeatedly-- "Are they gone yet?" Then she began describing with hysterical emotion the effect it produced on her to see black; and started, and trembled, and, at last, fell a weeping--and when I asked what the matter? answered, she didn't know; but she felt so afraid of dying! I imagined her as little likely to die as myself. She was rather thin, but young, and fresh complexioned, and her eyes sparkled as bright as diamonds. I did remark, to be sure, that mounting the stairs made her breathe very quick, that the least sudden noise set her all in a quiver, and that she coughed troublesomely sometimes: but I knew nothing of what these symptoms portended, and had no impulse to sympathize with her. We don't in general take to foreigners here, Mr. Lockwood, unless they take to us first. Young Earnshaw was altered considerably in the three years of his absence. He had grown sparer, and lost his colour, and spoke and dressed quite differently; and, on the very day of his return, he told Joseph and me we must thenceforth quarter ourselves in the back-kitchen, and leave the house for him. Indeed, he would have carpeted and papered a small spare room for a parlour; but his wife expressed such pleasure at the white floor, and huge glowing fire-place, at the pewter dishes, and delf-case, and dog-kennel, and the wide space there was to move about in, where they usually sat, that he thought it unneccessary to her comfort, and so dropped the intention. She expressed pleasure, too, at finding a sister among her new acquaintance, and she prattled to Catherine and kissed her and ran about with her, and gave her quantities of presents, at the beginning. Her affection tired very soon, however, and when she grew peevish, Hindley became tyrannical. A few words from her, evincing a dislike to Heathcliff, were enough to rouse in him all his old hatred of the boy. He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead, compelling him to do so, as hard as any other lad on the farm. Heathcliff bore his degradation pretty well at first, because Cathy taught him what she learnt, and worked or played with him in the fields. They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages, the young master being entirely negligent how they behaved, and what they did, so they kept clear of him. He would not even have seen after their going to church on Sundays, only Joseph and the curate reprimanded his


flips off the breakers one by one, then repeats the process with those in the second panel. Michael Mace and his two nameless companions have been plunged into darkness. Triumph awaits in several eerie shades of green. OLD FRIENDS Ascending the second run of stairs, Nina nervously turns the Tac Light in her hand, and vertiginous patterns of shadow and light wheel up the wall. As John follows her and as Michael steps onto the landing, darkness cascades through the rooms below. The mechanical systems of the house shut down; the faint humming-ticking-buzzing-sighing of motors and pumps and fans and air in circulation, all the muffled sounds of a living home that are monotonous enough to seem like silence, suddenly become true silence so deep that it summons dread. Calaphas is here. He has cut the power to the residence, which means he’s in the garage where earlier Michael had noticed electric-service panels. He’ll be inside the house proper in a minute or two. Thereafter, any sound they make will approximately locate them, diminishing the need for the agent to stalk them cautiously room by room. Evidently, this same realization occurs to Nina, for she takes the remaining stairs two at a time, heedless of the noise she makes while the enemy is still in the garage. When Michael joins her and the boy at the stairhead, a raveling of luck is offered to them when the beam of the Tac Light silvers the fibers of a dangling cord at the far end of the upstairs hall—the pull rope for the attic trapdoor. If they had to search all the rooms and walk-in closets to find the way higher, they would never reach the wanted refuge in time. The end of the rope passes through a hole in a red rubber ball and ends in a knot. He pulls the trapdoor down, and an automatic ladder unfolds in three sections. With the light, Nina leads John into the high redoubt. Left in near darkness, Michael follows, sure that Calaphas is entering the house or already inside. In the high room, Michael puts down his rifle. He turns and drops to his knees and reaches through the open trap and pulls hard on the uppermost rails of the spring-loaded ladder, reversing its action, muscling it back into position. The sections fold upward with somewhat more clatter than they unfolded, but he is able to prevent the loaded trap from thumping noisily when it seats once more in its frame. This last-ditch bastion, where nothing is currently stored, extends over the entire top floor of the house, offering in excess of seven feet of clearance. It is fully floored with particleboard attached to the second-floor ceiling studs with recessed screws that shine in Nina’s light. The chief advantage of this refuge is that there’s only one way into it, so that if Calaphas pulls down the ladder, they’ll know he’s coming; he won’t be able to climb at a run, and he’ll be leading with his head, the preferred target. The primary disadvantage is


one of the Aratar, called Lord of Waters and King of the Sea, The name was interpreted by the Eldar to mean 'The Pourer' or 'The Rainer'. See especially 19-20, 36. 8-10, 18-24, 36, 44, 51, 52, 59-61, 64, 70, 97, 116, 120, 133-5, 141, 146, 149-52, 187, 190, 240, 256, 260, 294-8, 301-2, 305-6, 308 Ulumri The great horns of Ulmo made by the Maia Salmar. 19, 36, 59 Ulwarth Son of Ulfang the Black, slain by the sons of Bor in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. 189, 235 manyar Name given to those Elves who went on the westward Journey from Cuivinen but did not reach Aman: 'Those not of Aman', beside Amanyar 'Those of Aman'. 54, 58 marth 'Ill-fate', a fictitious name for his father given out by Trin in Nargothrond. 257 Umbar Great natural haven and fortress of the Nmenreans south of the Bay of Belfalas. 334 Undying Lands Aman and Eressa; also called the Deathless Lands. 308, 320, 324, 345, 348 Ungoliant The great spider, destroyer with Melkor of the Trees of Valinor. Shelob in The Lord of the Rings was 'the last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world' (The Two Towers IV 9). 79-80, 84, 85, 88-90, 100, 109, 116, 144, 157,198,307 Union of Maedhros The league formed by Maedhros to defeat Morgoth that ended in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad 230 Urthel One of the twelve companions of Barahir on Dorthonion. 187 Urulki Quenya word meaning 'fire-serpent', dragon. 137, 294-304, 308 Utumno The first great stronghold of Melkor, in the north of Middle-earth, destroyed by the Valar. 31, 37, 46, 51-2, 81, 91, 114, 139 Vair 'The Weaver', one of the Valier, the spouse of Nmo Mandos. 18, 21 Valacirca 'The Sickle of the Valar', name of the constellation of the Great Bear. 48, 211 Valandil Youngest son of Isildur; third King of Arnor. 367 Valaquenta 'Account of the Valar', a short work treated as a separate entity from The Silmarillion proper. Valar 'Those with Power', 'The Powers' (singular Vala); name given to those great Ainur who entered into E at the beginning of Time, and assumed the function of guarding and governing Arda. Called also the Great Ones, the Rulers of Arda, the Lords of the West, the Lords of Valinor. Passim; see especially 10-12, 37, 81-2, and see also Ainur, Aratar. Valaraukar 'Demons of Might' (singular Valarauko), Quenya form corresponding to Sindarin Balrog. 26 Valarma The horn of the Vala Orom. 22, 37, 85, 108-9 Valier 'The Queens of the Valar' (singular Valie); a term used only in the Valaquenta. 18, 20, 23 Valimar See Valmar. Valinor The land of the Valar in Aman, beyond the mountains of the Pelri; also called the Guarded Realm. Passim; see especially 32-3, 117 Valmar The city of the Valar in Valinor; the name also occurs in the form Valimar. In Galadriel's lament in Lrien (The Fellowship of the Ring II 8) Valimar is made equivalent to Valinor. 21-3, 33, 51, 57, 64, 70, 76-9, 82-4, 94, 117, 227-8, 307-8 Vna One of the Valier, the sister of Yavanna


The Invisible Man- A Grotesque Romance.txt

Marvel, stoutly. The mariner stared, paper in hand. Mr. Marvel jerkily faced about. "Wait a bit," said the mariner, rising and speaking slowly. "D'you mean to say--?" "I do," said Mr. Marvel. "Then why did you let me go on and tell you all this blarsted stuff, then? What d'yer mean by letting a man make a fool of himself like that for? Eigh?" Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks. The mariner was suddenly very red indeed; he clenched his hands. "I been talking here this ten minutes," he said; "and you, you little pot-bellied, leathery-faced son of an old boot, couldn't have the elementary manners--" "Don't you come bandying words with me," said Mr. Marvel. "Bandying words! I'm a jolly good mind--" "Come up," said a voice, and Mr. Marvel was suddenly whirled about and started marching off in a curious spasmodic manner. "You'd better move on," said the mariner. "Who's moving on?" said Mr. Marvel. He was receding obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with occasional violent jerks forward. Some way along the road he began a muttered monologue, protests and recriminations. "Silly devil!" said the mariner, legs wide apart, elbows akimbo, watching the receding figure. "I'll show you, you silly ass,--hoaxing me! It's here--on the paper!" Mr. Marvel retorted incoherently and, receding, was hidden by a bend in the road, but the mariner still stood magnificent in the midst of the way, until the approach of a butcher's cart dislodged him. Then he turned himself towards Port Stowe. "Full of extra- ordinary asses," he said softly to himself. "Just to take me down a bit--that was his silly game--It's on the paper!" And there was another extraordinary thing he was presently to hear, that had happened quite close to him. And that was a vision of a "fist full of money" (no less) travelling without visible agency, along by the wall at the corner of St. Michael's Lane. A brother mariner had seen this wonderful sight that very morning. He had snatched at the money forthwith and had been knocked headlong, and when he had got to his feet the butterfly money had vanished. Our mariner was in the mood to believe anything, he declared, but that was a bit too stiff. Afterwards, however, he began to think things over. The story of the flying money was true. And all about that neighbourhood, even from the august London and Country Banking Company, from the tills of shops and inns--doors standing that sunny weather entirely open--money had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men. And it had, though no man had traced it, invariably ended its mysterious flight in the pocket of that agitated gentleman in the obsolete silk hat, sitting outside the little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe. Chapter 15 The Man Who Was Running In the early evening time Doctor Kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

looked down at his formerly graceful fingers, now spindly with extra joints in them, and grimaced. “And worse than that, I have to look at myself every day.” “Could you not have used a glamour?” “Well, perhaps, but I thought our snow king’s enchantments might shred it. This place is stuffed full of them. I risked putting one on Shadow, because if anyone was to reveal him, it would not matter much. He is nobody’s enemy.” I gazed at him. “And you are?” “I have tried multiple times to free you by force, which didn’t go very well. I killed several of the king’s lords and ladies, though.” My mouth fell open. “He never told me about that.” “Why would he? Anyway, I eventually came up with this idea”—he gestured sourly at his unsightly self—“and after talking things over with Aud, we decided—” “Aud!” I nearly yelped. “Aud is working to—to rescue me?” “The whole village is working to rescue you, my dear. We’ve had almost a merry time, plotting it all out.” I tried to picture this, Aud and Thora and Krystjan and the rest in the tavern, bandying about ideas to free me from Faerie, but my imagination failed me utterly—mainly because I could not picture them caring. “Why?” I said softly. “Why?” His eyes crinkled with amusement. “You rescued three of their children—and scores more will be spared, no doubt, now that the changeling has been cast out.” “I also freed a faerie king who is perfectly content to doom them to eternal winter.” “Yes, but I managed to convince them that your intentions in that respect were noble.” He said it in an offhand way, not caring if it was true or not. I shivered, though I hadn’t felt the cold in days. “They weren’t,” I said. “Not for the most part. I wanted—” I looked down at myself, at my ridiculous dress. “I wanted to understand the story. I suppose I thought about helping Aud and the others, but I won’t lie and say that I didn’t think about science first. They should not be risking their lives to help me.” “Emily, Emily,” he said. “I’m positively astonished you decided to help these people, whether they came second, third, or fourteenth in your mind. Have you ever done something like that before? Thought of someone other than yourself and your research, I mean.” I glared at him. “You are calling me self-centred? You?” He shrugged, unruffled by a slight against something he put little stock in, namely, his character. “In any event, these are practical people, and they care more about what you did than the why of it all. You should have seen Thora’s face when I told them you’d been taken. And Lilja and Margret were ready to declare war for you. Not to mention Aud—she loves that boy you rescued like her own child. And as for Ulfar, he swore on his mother’s grave they’d get you back—he only let out about a half dozen words in total before retreating into that gloomy mug


Jaremy went on. "The forest is vast. The wildlings might have fallen on him anywhere. I'd wager these two were the last survivors of his party, on their way back to us . . . but the enemy caught them before they could reach the safety of the Wall. The corpses are still fresh, these men cannot have been dead more than a day "No, " Samwell Tarly squeaked. Jon was startled. Sam's nervous, high-pitched voice was the last he would have expected to hear. The fat boy was frightened of the officers, and Ser Jaremy was not known for his patience. "I did not ask for your views, boy," Rykker said coldly. "Let him speak, ser," Jon blurted. Mormont's eyes flicked from Sam to Jon and back again. "If the lad has something to say, I'll hear him out. Come closer, boy. We can't see you behind those horses." Sam edged past Jon and the garrons, sweating profusely. "My lord, it . . . it can't be a day or . . . look . . . the blood . . ." "Yes?" Mormont growled impatiently. "Blood, what of it?" "He soils his smallclothes at the sight of it," Chett shouted out, and the rangers laughed. Sam mopped at the sweat on his brow. "You . . . you can see where Ghost . . . Jon's direwolf . . . you can see where he tore off that man's hand, and yet . . . the stump hasn't bled, look . . ." He waved a hand. "My father . . . L-lord Randyll, he, he made me watch him dress animals sometimes, when . . . after . . ." Sam shook his head from side to side, his chins quivering. Now that he had looked at the bodies, he could not seem to look away. "A fresh kill . . . the blood would still flow, my lords. Later . . . later it would be clotted, like a . . . a jelly, thick and . . . and . . ." He looked as though he was going to be sick. "This man . . . look at the wrist, it's all . . . crusty . . . dry . . . like . . . " Jon saw at once what Sam meant. He could see the torn veins in the dead man's wrist, iron worms in the pale flesh. His blood was a black dust. Yet Jaremy Rykker was unconvinced. "If they'd been dead much longer than a day, they'd be ripe by now, boy. They don't even smell." Dywen, the gnarled old forester who liked to boast that he could 490 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN smell snow coming on, sidled closer to the corpses and took a whiff. "Well, they're no pansy flowers, but ... m'lord has the truth of it. There's no corpse stink." "They . . . they aren't rotting." Sam pointed, his fat finger shaking only a little. "Look, there's . . . there's no maggots or . . .


accounts, you held yourself rather well.’ Did I? ‘Hang on, what—’ ‘I assume you’ll fit these studies around your work here?’ she interrupted. ‘Of course. I’m thinking I might just start with a part-time course.’ Shit. I hadn’t thought about how to ask her about it. Would I still be able to keep my job? A roof over my head? I tried to quieten my thoughts and read her story. Most of the time you could predict someone’s behaviour by their past. Most of the time people didn’t change. Most of the time. I realised she was staring at me. ‘Croissants, Martha. And fresh coffee. Chop-chop!’ And with that, she went back upstairs. ‘So, when did you buy this house?’ I tried to act as casually as possible; as if the answer mattered little, one way or the other. I knew if she thought I was fishing, she wouldn’t bite. Perhaps it was her acting skills that made her so difficult to read. ‘Martha, a person such as myself does not buy a house, one acquires a house.’ It took all of my willpower not to roll my eyes. ‘Okay, well, when did you acquire number 12?’ ‘Oh, it’s hard to say really. I feel as though I’ve always been here. In fact, it’s hard to remember a time when I lived anywhere else.’ I dusted the picture frames on the mantelpiece and picked up the black and white wedding photo. ‘It was 1965,’ she began, settling down to the cosmopolitan-style breakfast I had laid on the dining table. ‘I was a beautiful bride. Many of the guests likened me to Grace Kelly. Oh, you mightn’t think so now, but I was a natural blonde.’ A natural liar, I thought. It was hard to tell if her stories were real or mere fabrications of the truth – stories she had picked up along the way and made her own. I looked at the woman in the picture. It was true, she did look like an old Hollywood starlet, but I couldn’t see the resemblance at all. The man was tall, dark and handsome with the look of someone who had captured the moon in his pocket. ‘He was a pilot,’ she said, slathering butter on her croissant. ‘Far too old for me, or at least that’s what my mother told me. But I was hopelessly in love with him. I thought he was so dashing. He was an American, you know, and to a twenty-something Irish girl, well, he was like Clark Gable.’ She lost herself in the past for a moment. ‘He adored this strange little house. But he was a perfectionist, always trying to fix things. You have to understand, old houses have their quirks. Some things are meant to be flawed. Therein lies beauty.’ She was a captivating storyteller. I knew there was a peculiar history within these walls and whatever it was, it must have happened long before Madame Bowden arrived. ‘What happened to your husband, if you don’t mind me asking?’ ‘Plane crash. We were only married


above the first button on my dress. “So beautiful,” he says as he deftly undoes the first button. “You have made me the happiest man alive today.” With infinite slowness, he unfastens each one, all the way down my back. “I love you so much.” Trailing kisses from the nape of my neck to the edge of my shoulder. Between each kiss he murmurs, “I. Want. You. So. Much. I. Want. To. Be. Inside. You. You. Are. Mine.” Each word is intoxicating. I close my eyes and tilt my head, giving him easier access to my neck, and I fall further under the spell that is Christian Grey, my husband. “Mine,” he whispers once more. He peels my dress down my arms so that it pools at my feet in a cloud of ivory silk and lace. “Turn around,” he whispers, his voice suddenly hoarse. I do so and he gasps. I’m dressed in a tight, blush-pink satin corset with garter straps, matching lacy briefs, and white silk stockings. Christian’s eyes travel greedily down my body, but he says nothing. He just gazes at me, his eyes wide with want. “You like?” I whisper aware of the shy blush creeping across my cheeks. “More than like, baby. You look sensational. Here.” He holds out his hand and taking it, I step out of my dress. “Keep still,” he murmurs and without taking his darkening eyes off mine, he runs his middle finger over my breasts, following the line of my corset. My breath shallows, and he repeats the journey over my breasts once more, his tantalizing finger sending tingles down my spine. He stops and twirls his index finger in the air, indicating that he wants me to turn around. For him, right now, I’d do anything. “Stop,” he says. I’m facing the bed, away from him. His arm encircles my waist, pulling me against him, and he nuzzles my neck. Gently he cups my breasts, toying with them, while his thumbs circle over my nipples so that they strain against the fabric of my corset. “Mine,” he whispers. “Yours,” I breathe. Leaving my breasts bereft he runs his hands down my stomach, over my belly, and down to my thighs, his thumbs skimming my sex. I stifle a moan. His fingers skate down each garter, and with his usual dexterity, he simultaneously unhooks each one from my stockings. His hands travel around to my behind. 26/551 “Mine,” he breathes as his hands spread across my backside, the tips of his fingers brushing my sex. “Ah.” “Hush.” His hands travel down the backs of my thighs, and once more he un- clips my garters. Leaning down, he pulls back the cover on the bed. “Sit down.” I do as I’m told in his thrall, and he kneels at my feet and gently tugs off each of my white bridal Jimmy Choos. He grasps the top of my left stocking and slowly peels it off, running his thumbs down my leg . . . Oh my. He repeats the process with my other


Ricky swallowed hard and nodded. “For fifty thousand dollars, Mr. McDeere will leave, never return, and never speak of his bastard child. Isn’t that right, son?” “Yes, sir,” Ricky mumbled, refusing to look at me. “You made him agree to this,” I said to my father. To Ricky, I added, “Tell him no.” At last, my father turned around, his gaze bouncing from one part of me to another. My crestfallen face first, then to my hand, where the knife remained. “Now, look here, Virginia,” my father said as he continued to stare at the knife. “There’s no need for that.” I kept my own gaze on Ricky. “Tell him! Tell him you love me and that we’re going to run away and find our baby and have a happy family.” “But he doesn’t want that,” my father said. “Do you, son?” “You’re lying.” I turned to Ricky. “Tell me he’s lying!” Ricky’s gaze also skipped about. To the unlit fireplace, to his hands, to the zebra rug under his feet. Anywhere but at me. “It’s true, Ginny,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.” “See?” My father’s tone was shockingly boastful. He was, I realized, enjoying the worst moment of my life. “I know you’re hurt now, but it’s for the best. You don’t want trash like him dragging you down for the rest of your life.” “But--” It was all I could muster. Shock and heartbreak had silenced me. But I knew I could still speak volumes with the knife in my hand. I tried to rush at both of them, not caring which one I hurt just as long as I inflicted pain on someone. But before I could take a step, I was halted by a gentle grip on the arm that held the knife. My mother. No doubt summoned by my sister. Although I was surprised to see her out of bed and walking around on her own, my mother barely seemed fazed by the sight of me holding a knife. Alert for the first time in weeks, she knew exactly what was transpiring in that billiard room. “Don’t, my darling,” she said, her hands disconcertingly strong as she wrested the knife from my grip. “They’re not worth destroying your young life over.” I let her take the knife from my hand and collapsed against her, weeping. With the knife in one hand and stroking my hair with the other, she addressed my father. “Fifty thousand dollars, Winston? Your price has gone up. If I recall, you only offered twenty-five thousand to make the man I loved go away.” “That didn’t stop him from taking it,” my father said with not an ounce of softness in his voice. “You can judge me for it all you want--and you certainly have--but it was the best thing to happen to you. It allowed you to get married, pretend that Lenora was my child, and keep your precious reputation intact.” His words caused something inside my mother to break. I watched it happen. Her eyes went dark and her body still. Standing silent


off the shelves on the basis of some internet gossip. And most consumers don’t have their eyes glued to Twitter—trust me, it’s a very small fraction of publishing that’s going to care.” I make a gross whining noise. “My reputation with that fraction matters, though.” “Your reputation is intact,” he says breezily. “It’s all allegations, isn’t it? Totally groundless, right? Don’t issue a response. Don’t get entangled. If they’ve got nothing, they’ve got nothing, and soon enough people will see it for the nasty character assassination that it is.” He sounds so confident, so wholly unconcerned, that I feel a flutter of relief. Maybe he’s right. Maybe this will get construed as bullying—the Twitterati are always vehemently against bullying. Maybe it’ll all be good press for me in the end. Brett yammers on for a bit longer, citing examples of other famous authors who have been targets of online hate campaigns. “It never hurts sales, Junie. It never does. Just let the trolls say what they want. You’re going to be fine.” I nod and bite back what I want to say. Brett’s right—there’s no point in escalating this, since any response only gives the allegations legitimacy. “Okay.” “Okay? Good.” Brett sounds like he’s ready to be done with this call. “Don’t worry so much, all right?” “Hey, wait . . .” The thought has just crossed my mind. “Have you heard anything from the Greenhouse people?” “Hmm? Oh, nah. But it’s only been a week, they’re probably resting up from their trip. Give them some time.” I feel a niggling dread then, but I tell myself I’m being silly. It’s not like these two things are connected. Justin and Harvey aren’t necessarily glued to Twitter, following the latest book gossip. They’ve got better things to do. “Okay.” “Just relax, June. You’re going to get some haters. It comes with the territory. If it’s not true, then you have nothing to worry about.” Brett pauses for a moment. “I mean, it’s not true, is it?” “No! God. Of course not.” “Then block and ignore them.” Brett snorts. “Or better yet, block Twitter altogether. You writers are too online to begin with. This will blow over. These things always do.” BRETT’S WRONG. THIS WON’T BLOW OVER. TWITTER SCANDALS ARE like snowballs; the more people that see it, the more who feel it necessary to weigh in with their own opinions and agendas, creating an explosion of discourse branching off the instigating conversation. Past a critical mass of visibility, everyone in the industry starts talking about it. And @AthenaLiusGhost, whoever they are, has nearly a thousand followers by now. They’ve reached that critical mass. The Athena-June scandal, as it’s being now referred to, has become the Discourse of the Moment. This is wholly different from the Lily Wu discourse, which involved a dozen people at most. This time, there’s blood in the water. Silence isn’t an option. Everyone has to declare a side, or they’re accused of complicity. (SMH at so many supposed allies staying silent now that their friend’s been exposed, tweet anonymous


Lyndon’s own hand, he wrote that shell-shock was a regrettable weakness, not found in good units. ‘There is insufficient evidence for a conviction,’ he’d written, yet he recommended a death sentence in order to send a message to the battalion, who had suffered great losses the day before. There was no mention that it was the general’s military strategy that had led to these wasted lives. One was an Irish soldier, Frank O’Dowd, who was shot for refusing to put his hat on because it was wet through from the endless rain. He was drugged by a doctor to get him through the final hours in the death cells. Mr Turner had been able to contact the medic, who confirmed that O’Dowd was a volunteer soldier. ‘They couldn’t see brave men when they were standing there in front of them,’ the medic had told him. He also confirmed that, once the firing squad had finished, my brother gave the Irishman the final coup de grâce, a bullet to the head. I spent the night at the Great Western Royal Hotel in Paddington. Unlike so much of London, it had made it through the war relatively unscathed, with some minor air-raid damage to the roof. It was strange being back home. I no longer felt a part of the fabric and the people seemed strange to me, different somehow. The war had robbed them of so much. In that, I should have felt a kind of solidarity, but my war had been a very different one. I met with Mr Turner for lunch and he handed me a copy of the article they would print in the paper the following day. I read the article. It was powerful. Turner was an exceptional journalist and, rather than making a pantomime villain out of my brother, or a monster capable of terrible evil, he presented him as a very real man who had chosen brutality over human decency. This somehow made him more real, more accountable for his crimes. ‘No going back now,’ he said, tipping his hat to me before disappearing into the crowd on the street. ‘There is an old saying, Before you set out on a journey of revenge, you must dig two graves,’ said a woman’s voice, deepened by time and wisdom, yet unmistakably that of my old friend Jane. ‘Jane!’ I cried, embracing her tightly. I had written and asked if she would meet me in the hotel lobby. ‘Confucius said that,’ she warned, fearing the endeavour would somehow destroy me too. ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’ ‘I need to own my story. To take back my power.’ I realised now that I shared another commonality with the families of those dead soldiers. I was shamed into silence. Ashamed of what happened to me, of how I had somehow ‘let’ it happen to me and of how people would look on me now, as some sort of damaged woman. I felt tainted by it. Other than Josef’s quiet and humble company, I had isolated myself


when?) or ad hom details about naming conventions (“Ah Kay? Did she get this shit from a Hong Kong crime drama?”) that Athena herself wrote in. The comments are all shit like YAAAS KWEEN and OMG GO OFF KIMMY and LOLLLL THAT WHITE GIRL IS QUAKING. Kimberly later has the nerve to DM me on Instagram asking if I’d like to be a guest on her channel, and I take some vindictive pleasure in instructing her to contact me through my publicist, Emily, and then instructing Emily to ghost her. Another online firebrand, a guy named Xiao Chen, puts out a Substack essay arguing that The Last Front should never have been published. I’m actually quite familiar with Xiao Chen’s brand—Athena had complained about him viciously and often. Xiao Chen had gone viral the previous year for a piece in Vox titled “Enough with Diaspora Fiction,” which argued essentially that no one in the current wave of Chinese American novelists was producing anything of value, because none of them had lived through things like the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Cultural Revolution, and that spoiled Bay Area kids who couldn’t even speak Mandarin and who thought that Asian identification boiled down to being annoyingly obsessed with bubble tea and BTS were diluting the radical force of the diaspora canon. I’ve seen him getting in vicious spats with other writers on Twitter; LEARN CHINESE, he would snap, or SHUT UP, BRAINWASHED WESTERN PUPPETS. His modus operandi seems to be ascribing everything wrong with a text to some armchair-diagnosed psychological problem with the writer; in my case, Xiao Chen thinks I wrote The Last Front because I am “one of the many white women, like those who write queer fan fiction of The Untamed, who not only have an unexamined fetish for feminine-looking Asian men, but who think Chinese history is something to cherry-pick from in search of intriguing and shiny nuggets, like nice Ming vases to set in the corner.” Honestly, his vitriol makes me laugh. Some critical pieces are cold and condescending enough to wound, but this one is so emotional, so angry, that it only reveals Xiao Chen’s own insecurities and bottomless, inexplicable rage. I imagine him hunched over a laptop in his basement, snarling and spitting to an audience of none. I wonder what Xiao Chen would do if he ever saw me in person—punch me in the face, or utter some inane niceties and slink away. People like him are always braver online than they are in the flesh. Jen: People like that just can’t stand to see women succeed. Marnie: Misogynism at its worst. Also, what’s The Untamed? There’s one scene, which occurs two hundred pages into the novel, that all the critics are obsessed with. Indeed, every negative review mentions it by at least the third paragraph. Annie Waters—a character I’d expanded from Athena’s draft, the seventeen-year-old daughter of YMCA missionaries—visits the laborers’ camp alone to hand out Bibles and Christmas biscuits. The men, who haven’t seen their wives or any women of their kind in months,


he gets to come to you and play house.” I am taken aback. “So that’s the perfect situation? Is that what you want? To sleep with anyone you want and play house with me occasionally?” Huff tosses the piece of grass in his fingers. “No, Daphne. That’s not what I want. I want all of you. I just don’t want to share you with him.” I shouldn’t be shocked by this. Huff has always wanted me all to himself. But it makes me nervous. I get not wanting to share me with Steven. And, when I really think about it, we do have a flirty dynamic that, roles reversed, would drive me crazy. But it isn’t so much lust as it is a deep comfort level, a love that has grown out of a life-changing experience we shared. I can see why that bothers Huff. But he also can’t be this possessive over me. Not now. I take his hand. “Look, I’m glad you brought this up because it’s super important. But what I need you to hear me say is that, for seven years, whatever I was doing, whoever I was with, I was thinking about you. In the quiet moments of the day, when my mind wandered, it wandered to you. When I thought about feeling really happy and safe and fulfilled, it was you who made me feel that way. When Lanier scolded me for breaking up with a really good guy, it wasn’t because I couldn’t see a future with him; it was because I could only see a future with you. So Steven and I might have a bedtime routine with Henry, but what you and I have is a real, true love story. It’s a connection I’ve never felt with anyone else, and I know I never will. If you want to throw that away because the logistics are hard, then that’s fine. I hear you. We’re grown-ups and we have our own lives, and logistics are hard.” I sound confident, but this still gives me butterflies. What if Huff takes my offer and walks away? “This new situation is something Steven and I have been talking about and will continue to talk about. But I need you to know that no matter what we decide about our living situation, I will never, ever stop loving you.” Huff lies down, his hands under his neck. “For real?” he asks. “For real,” I say, lying down beside him. “Then I guess I’m the luckiest guy in the world.” He kisses me, running his fingers through my hair. He pulls me closer. “I mean, I guess I could get used to having Steven as a roommate if it means getting to do this all the time.” But as I kiss him, a wave of panic washes over me. This hiccup reminds me how much I don’t like change. Steven and I have made magic of our coparenting, of being there for our son in a way that feels healthy and honest. How would adding Huff to that dynamic


wife pussy.” The way she clenched at that admission, growing wetter, hotter, around his driving flesh, burned away the last of his leftover self-preservation. There was only her. She was all he needed to survive and the truth of that, his truth, came pouring out. “Fuck it, I’m obsessed with you. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. Give me the orgasm. Give it to me, princess. Yours. Come on. I fucking need it.” Natalie speared her fingers into his hair and brought him in for a wild, almost animalistic kiss, eager little sounds coming from her throat. She was close, so close—and then her trembles turned to an earthquake, her lips releasing his to cry out, her body still getting pummeled up against the wall. His grunts turned to growls, his hips slapping upward between her thighs, eagerly experiencing her orgasm along with her. The throb and clench of his wife. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” August’s climax was like reaching land after parachuting at night into the ocean. For a while there, he thought he’d die, and then came the relief. Relief so utterly thorough, his legs almost gave out halfway through, but his body wouldn’t allow him to stop. He drilled her ass to the wall and held, shaking so hard his teeth chattered, muscles screaming from the strain. “Natalie. Christ. Oh Christ . . . I love you. I love you.” His chest nearly caved in after saying the words, but he couldn’t hold them back, because they belonged to her. He belonged to her, and she should know it. Maybe she wasn’t quite able to say it back just yet. And that was okay. He should expect her to be hesitant after keeping her at a distance. He’d wait forever, for the rest of his life, for those three words from her, if necessary. For now, he should just be grateful she was coming home. As soon as he’d finished completely, he stumbled on half numb legs to the bed, Natalie safe in his arms, and he lay down, pulling her as close as possible, kissing his way across her hairline. Her warm breath bathed his throat and he wrapped his arms tighter, drawing the duvet around their half-naked bodies as best he could when they were on top of the covers. “August, I don’t think you realize what it means to me that you came all the way here,” she said softly. “I don’t think you realize how valued and important that made me feel. Thank you.” It took him a moment to swallow the sideways pencil in his throat. “You’re the most important person in my life, Natalie. You always will be.” Her fingertips were busy for a moment in his chest hair, before they stilled and she exhaled slowly. “The day you rescued Teri Frasier and her kids from the flood . . . that’s when I realized I was in love with you, but when you walked in tonight, I . . . you felt like my husband. You were my real husband for


I don’t want to go, it’s just that right now . . . I just can’t.” Bella flipped a hand up as if to say, “Whatever.” And then she said, “It’s whatever you want, Kristi. Who am I to try to talk you out of living the rest of your life as a monk, er, a nun?” Her eyebrows arched. “Just your best frickin’ friend. But, hey! Go! Go on. Get out. Go home.” She made shooing motions with her hands. “Hole up in your house by yourself if that’s what you want.” “I do. It is exactly what I want.” “Fine!” Then Bella calmed a bit. “Look, you just survived a horrific attack and lost your husband, watched him die in your arms, for God’s sake. That’s . . . that’s unthinkable. Horrific. The worst! But even so, there’s so much to life, so much to live for.” Kristi’s eyes grew hot. She thought of the baby. Her baby. Jay’s. Growing inside her. “I’ll be fine,” she insisted, and her voice sounded rough. “I know I’ve got some things to work through, but . . . but I’ll be fine.” She was on the edge of telling her friend about her pregnancy, but didn’t. It seemed traitorous somehow, that Bella Lyons would know the truth and Jay wouldn’t. Not ever. Of course she would have to tell Bella—or someone—soon enough, she thought as she pulled her debit card from her wallet. But not today. Definitely not today. “Look, Jess and Sarah and I, we’re thinking of starting jogging. Like at least once a week, maybe more. You already run, right? So why don’t you join us?” “I’ll think about it,” she lied. Right now, she couldn’t think of anything worse than getting together with her friends and doing anything where there would be hours to talk about their lives, their husbands, their children, their joy. Not yet. “And you know, if you ever want to do a show, promote your next book or whatever? The producer at the station is interested.” Bella looked hopeful, as she always did. Though she sold ads for the station, she seemed to think it her mission to find guests for the local talk shows. This wasn’t the first time Bella had suggested Kristi make herself available for a television interview. Today, Kristi wasn’t in the mood. “Another time.” “Promise?” Kristi shot her a look. “No. But if I ever consider it, you’ll be the first to know.” “Cool,” she said, though the way Bella muttered it, Kristi was pretty sure her response to the offer was anything but chill with her friend. They split the bill and hugged good-bye, but there was definitely a stiffness to the embrace that had never been there before. “You take care of yourself, okay?” Bella asked as she released her. “And you call me, or text, if you need anything. I mean it. Anything.” “Sure. You got it,” Kristi lied, and holding her jacket tight against the wind, hurried back to the spot where she’d parked her car, just


and he asked M if I could go. It seemed only to be a liaison job, so M said yes although he told my chief that you would be furious at being given a woman to work with.' She paused and when Bond said nothing continued: 'I had to meet Mathis in Paris and come down with him. I've got a friend who is a vendeuse with Dior and somehow she managed to borrow me this and the frock I was wearing this morning, otherwise I couldn't possibly have competed with all these people.' She made a gesture towards the room. 'The office was very jealous although they didn't know what the job was. All they knew was that I was to work with a Double O. Of course you're our heroes. I was enchanted.' Bond frowned. 'It's not difficult to get a Double O number if you're prepared to kill people,' he said. 'That's all the meaning it has. It's nothing to be particularly proud of. I've got the corpses of a Japanese cipher expert in New York and a Norwegian double agent in Stockholm to thank for being a Double 0. Probably quite decent people. They just got caught up in the gale of the world like that Yugoslav that Tito bumped off. It's a confusing business but if it's one's profession, one does what one's told. How do you like the grated egg with your caviar?' 'It's a wonderful combination,' she said. 'I'm loving my dinner. It seems a shame . . .' She stopped, warned by a cold look in Bond's eye. 'If it wasn't for the job, we wouldn't be here,' he said. Suddenly he regretted the intimacy of their dinner and of their talk. He felt he had said too much and that what was only a working relationship had become confused. 'Let's consider what has to be done,' he said in a matter-of-fact voice. 'I'd better explain what I'm going to try and do and how you can help. Which isn't very much I'm afraid,' he added. 'Now these are the basic facts.' He proceeded to sketch out the plan and enumerate the various contingencies which faced them. The matre d'htel supervised the serving of the second course and then as they ate the delicious food, Bond continued. She listened to him coldly, but with attentive obedience. She felt thoroughly deflated by his harshness, while admitting to herself that she should have paid more heed to the warning of Head of S. 'He's a dedicated man,' her chief had said when he gave her the assignment. 'Don't imagine this is going to be any fun. He thinks of nothing but the job on hand and, while it's on, he's absolute hell to work for. But he's an expert and there aren't many about, so you won't be wasting your time. He's a good-looking chap, but don't fall for him. I don't think he's got much heart. Anyway, good luck and don't get hurt.' All this had been something of a challenge and she was pleased


Jasadis’ story deserves to be told in whole,” I said. “They are not something distasteful to be split up into pieces you can swallow.” “I never said—” Rory stopped short, brows drawing together. “What do you mean, they?” A light knock sounded at the door. We both went silent, our argument falling to the wayside in favor of trepidation. Had the Nizahl Heir returned? Rory’s elbow caught my stomach, pushing me behind him. What did he think he would do against the Commander? He could turn you in, Hanim whispered. The chemist works with dangerous substances every day. Think of how easy it would be for him to accidentally ingest a lethal dose. No one would suspect you. Killing Rory would only cause more problems. Mahair might not second-guess the accidental death of a soldier, but two accidental deaths in the span of a week? Rory went five years without speaking my true name. He would not betray me to the Heir now. “Rory? Are you there? Oh, please be here, Mistress Nadia will have my hide if I return empty-handed.” I tucked my dagger back into my boot while Rory opened the door. Fairel drooped in relief, lifting her skirt to step into the shop. Loose curls bounced around her round face. “You gave me a fright. I have a list from Mistress Nadia.” I tried to smile at Fairel. Rory grunted, “Talk to Sylvia. Damn this day,” and disappeared behind the curtains. Nobody roused at my footsteps through the darkened keep. I kept my tread light. Tomorrow was the day before the waleema. This was probably the most sleep the girls would get for the next two days. The groans of the old, waterlogged walls would hopefully disguise any sound I made outside. I carefully shut the rusted back door behind me and walked to the side of the keep. Kneeling on the damp ground, I dug my fingers into the soil and tore out the roots of the fig plant until my wrists ached and dirt crusted my fingertips. I shouldn’t have planted it to begin with. Even at full growth, these trees would never be like the fig trees in Jasad. The fig trees used to soar to more than thirty meters in Usr Jasad’s gardens. When the trees were saplings, the architects infused the branches with magic. Weaving them into complicated, mesmerizing patterns as they flourished. What kind of idiot was I to think I could stay here forever? Long enough for a fig plant to sprout, for the blue house to become mine, for Rory to give me his shop. Mahair didn’t belong to me. Any roots I planted could only ever rot. I stamped on what was left of the plant and scattered its mangled remains down the slope. Fig trees had no place here, and it had been cruel to let it hope. This is what he wants, Hanim whispered. No matter how docile you pretend to be, a feral animal shows its true colors in captivity. I pressed my palm over my heart


oddly pleased with the suggestion. “I’ll provide a boat. And these…” I hear the crinkling of a plastic bag. “I took a couple of her prescription pills. You can crush them up in her drink.” “Two Xanax and two sleeping pills?” The sound of the plastic is louder in Carter’s hand. “Is that enough?” “I don’t want this to look like an intentional overdose. And this is more than enough to make her weak and groggy,” Benjamin assures him. “When she’s starting to nod off, toss her in. The water’s cold.” I hear the smile in his voice. “Hazel will never wake up.” I reach for the wastepaper basket and vomit into it. Lee saved my life that day. I thought she’d disrupted my plan, destroyed my future, but if I had gotten into that boat with Jesse, I’d be dead. I am only alive because of her. Rachelle Graham gets up, retrieves a tissue box from a credenza. “There’s more,” she says. “But maybe that’s enough for today.” “No.” I wipe my mouth with a tissue. “Keep going.” Her lips are pressed together in a grim line as she clicks the trackpad. “Sounds easy enough,” Carter says brightly. “And if you want me to bang your hot wife, that’s a bonus.” There is some more banter about logistics: the boat, the timing, Benjamin’s schedule. I hear the exchange of money happen—the twenty-five thousand in cash. And then the recording stops. “There’s another file,” Rachelle says, but there is a coolness in her tone. When I meet her eyes, they have hardened against me. What has she concluded about my relationship with Carter Sumner? I feel nauseous and jittery, terrified of what I’m about to hear next, but there is no point in delaying it. “Play it,” I say. This time, Carter’s voice emerges from the speakers first. “You were right…” There is a chuckle in his voice. “She’s totally fallen for me. I think she’s in love.” “I’m not surprised,” my husband says, his words dripping disdain. “She thinks we’re running away together,” Carter says. “That we’re going to have a future.” I feel the weight of my lawyer’s eyes on me, but I don’t meet them. She knows I’m a liar now. A cheater. My gaze is locked onto the shiny surface of the table, tracing the whorls in the wood. “How sweet,” my husband sneers. “Where to?” “South America,” Carter says, showing his lack of geographical knowledge. “She thinks we’re going to take the boat up to Bellingham and get on a plane to start our new life together.” He is imitating me, mocking me. Hate and anger churn my guts. But Benjamin is pleased. “Nice work.” “She wants you to think she committed suicide,” Carter continues, like a schoolboy trying to impress his teacher. “She’s going to leave a note.” “I’ll destroy it,” Benjamin says calmly. “A suicide would reflect badly on me. This needs to look like an accident. Hazel jogs along the cliffside trails. She tripped. Fell in. The current swept her away.” “She’s going to


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

walking proudly and silently past the people who knelt by the water's edge. * * * * * A great fire, banked high and red, flamed in the grate and under the ivy-twined branches of the chandelier the Christmas table was spread. They had come home a little late and still dinner was not ready: but it would be ready in a jiffy his mother had said. They were waiting for the door to open and for the servants to come in, holding the big dishes covered with their heavy metal covers. All were waiting: uncle Charles, who sat far away in the shadow of the window, Dante and Mr Casey, who sat in the easy-chairs at either side of the hearth, Stephen, seated on a chair between them, his feet resting on the toasted boss. Mr Dedalus looked at himself in the pierglass above the mantelpiece, waxed out his moustache ends and then, parting his coat-tails, stood with his back to the glowing fire: and still from time to time he withdrew a hand from his coat-tail to wax out one of his moustache ends. Mr Casey leaned his head to one side and, smiling, tapped the gland of his neck with his fingers. And Stephen smiled too for he knew now that it was not true that Mr Casey had a purse of silver in his throat. He smiled to think how the silvery noise which Mr Casey used to make had deceived him. And when he had tried to open Mr Casey's hand to see if the purse of silver was hidden there he had seen that the fingers could not be straightened out: and Mr Casey had told him that he had got those three cramped fingers making a birthday present for Queen Victoria. Mr Casey tapped the gland of his neck and smiled at Stephen with sleepy eyes: and Mr Dedalus said to him: --Yes. Well now, that's all right. O, we had a good walk, hadn't we, John? Yes... I wonder if there's any likelihood of dinner this evening. Yes... O, well now, we got a good breath of ozone round the Head today. Ay, bedad. He turned to Dante and said: --You didn't stir out at all, Mrs Riordan? Dante frowned and said shortly: --No. Mr Dedalus dropped his coat-tails and went over to the sideboard. He brought forth a great stone jar of whisky from the locker and filled the decanter slowly, bending now and then to see how much he had poured in. Then replacing the jar in the locker he poured a little of the whisky into two glasses, added a little water and came back with them to the fireplace. --A thimbleful, John, he said, just to whet your appetite. Mr Casey took the glass, drank, and placed it near him on the mantelpiece. Then he said: --Well, I can't help thinking of our friend Christopher manufacturing... He broke into a fit of laughter and coughing and added: --...manufacturing that champagne for those fellows. Mr Dedalus laughed loudly. --Is it Christy?


finally bought a kerosene stove, she had helped him set it up in a former bedroom so he would share only the outdoor latrine with tenants in the compound. One house in the compound had been rented out, but others were in various stages of collapse. Ìyá Alákàrà’s home had been burnt to ashes when there was a power surge some years ago, while the house their father had built lost its roof to a storm a few months after their mother’s death. Now the walls had caved in, and grass grew tall and lush in the corridors of their childhood. The last time she was here, all her brothers had been in town for Easter, and there had been some talk, over plates of pounded yam and egusi soup, of all the children contributing to rebuild the house. Alàgbà had stressed what an important duty it was for them to make sure their father’s house did not come to ruin. Someone, she can’t remember who, had said he wished the family compound was located next to a major road, so that one of those new banks could buy it off their hands. Alàgbà had been enraged by the idea, and for an hour her brothers had argued about whether banks were really paying families millions of naira to build banking halls in their homestead, on the land where parents and ancestors had been buried. When Alàgbà fell silent, too disgusted to even discuss the possibility, the other brothers argued about how they would have shared the money if banks had been interested. Split into four, according to the number of wives their father had, or into twenty-six, so all the children could have an equal share? Or better still, into five, since they were the ones who had the idea and none of their half-siblings had even stepped into the family compound since their father died. Ìyá Ẹniọlá had chewed the dry fish in her egusi and waited for them to stop shouting so she could speak. Although her brothers’ wives kept glancing at her with eyes that pleaded with her to intervene, she knew that all they had to do was wait. She was used to her brothers’ raised voices and the veins that became visible in their temples as they shouted arguments that went nowhere. After the meal was finished and licked-clean fingers had been dipped into shallow bowls of soapy water, her brothers yawned, stretched their legs and wondered if their wives had bought any toothpicks. Their children took the dirty plates into the courtyard and their wives left for the makeshift kitchen to start preparing dinner, while the men, getting no definite answer about the toothpicks and assuming it was not their job to find them, began stabbing at their gums with overgrown nails. Finally alone with her siblings, Ìyá Ẹniọlá brought up her idea. She had gone to her family compound that day without even discussing the idea with her husband. If she had, maybe his response would have prepared her for the way her brothers


important business of its own. Shivering, the four of them stood and looked at the ship. Beside it stood another one. It was the Blagulon Kappa policecraft, a bulbous sharklike affair, slate green in colour and smothered with black stencilled letters of varying degrees of size and unfriendliness. The letters informed anyone who cared to read them as to where the ship was from, what section of the police it was assigned to, and where the power feeds should be connected. It seemed somehow unnaturally dark and silent, even for a ship whose two-man crew was at that moment lying asphyxicated in a smoke-filled chamber several miles beneath the ground. It is one of those curious things that is impossible to explain or define, but one can sense when a ship is completely dead. Ford could sense it and found it most mysterious - a ship and two policemen seemed to have gone spontaneously dead. In his experience the Universe simply didn't work like that. The other three could sense it too, but they could sense the bitter cold even more and hurried back into the Heart of Gold suffering from an acute attack of no curiosity. Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked, he nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust. "Marvin!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing?" "Don't feel you have to take any notice of me, please," came a muffled drone. "But how are you, metalman?" said Ford. "Very depressed." "What's up?" "I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there." "Why," said Ford squatting down beside him and shivering, "are you lying face down in the dust?" "It's a very effective way of being wretched," said Marvin. "Don't pretend you want to talk to me, I know you hate me." "No I don't." "Yes you do, everybody does. It's part of the shape of the Universe. I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me. Even robots hate me. If you just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away." He jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing the opposite direction. "That ship hated me," he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft. "That ship?" said Ford in sudden excitement. "What happened to it? Do you know?" "It hated me because I talked to it." "You talked to it?" exclaimed Ford. "What do you mean you talked to it?" "Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold. ================================================================= Chapter 35 That night, as the Heart of Gold was busy putting a few light years between itself and the Horsehead Nebula, Zaphod lounged under the small palm tree on the bridge trying to bang his brain into shape with massive Pan Galactic


that? His tears at the station. Volunteering to wash Haymitch but then challenging him this morning when apparently the nice-guy approach had failed. And now the waving at the window, already trying to win the crowd. All of the pieces are still fitting together, but I sense he has a plan forming. He hasn’t accepted his death. He is already fighting hard to stay alive. Which also means that kind Peeta Mellark, the boy who gave me the bread, is fighting hard to kill me. 60 R-i-i-i-p! I grit my teeth as Venia, a woman with aqua hair and gold tattoos above her eyebrows, yanks a strip of Fabric from my leg tearing out the hair beneath it. “Sorry!” she pipes in her silly Capitol accent. “You’re just so hairy!” Why do these people speak in such a high pitch? Why do their jaws barely open when they talk? Why do the ends of their sentences go up as if they’re asking a question? Odd vo- wels, clipped words, and always a hiss on the letter s . . . no wonder it’s impossible not to mimic them. Venia makes what’s supposed to be a sympathetic face. “Good news, though. This is the last one. Ready?” I get a grip on the edges of the table I’m seated on and nod. The final swathe of my leg hair is uprooted in a painful jerk. I’ve been in the Remake Center for more than three hours and I still haven’t met my stylist. Apparently he has no interest in seeing me until Venia and the other members of my prep team have addressed some obvious problems. This has in- cluded scrubbing down my body with a gritty loam that has removed not only dirt but at least three layers of skin, turning my nails into uniform shapes, and primarily, ridding my body of hair. My legs, arms, torso, underarms, and parts of my eye- brows have been stripped of the Muff, leaving me like a 61 plucked bird, ready for roasting. I don’t like it. My skin feels sore and tingling and intensely vulnerable. But I have kept my side of the bargain with Haymitch, and no objection has crossed my lips. “You’re doing very well,” says some guy named Flavius. He gives his orange corkscrew locks a shake and applies a fresh coat of purple lipstick to his mouth. “If there’s one thing we can’t stand, it’s a whiner. Grease her down!” Venia and Octavia, a plump woman whose entire body has been dyed a pale shade of pea green, rub me down with a lo- tion that first stings but then soothes my raw skin. Then they pull me from the table, removing the thin robe I’ve been al- lowed to wear off and on. I stand there, completely naked, as the three circle me, wielding tweezers to remove any last bits of hair. I know I should be embarrassed, but they’re so unlike people that I’m no more self-conscious than if a trio of oddly colored birds were pecking around


barked command to leave the school promises. If he did not move quickly enough for the principal, the man would chase him around the class, hitting him whenever he got close enough for his cane or whip to make contact. They would go round and round until Ẹniọlá finally managed to gather his things and find the exit. Doing either of those things was always complicated by the fact that his hands were busy rubbing his broken and bleeding skin. Also, his inability to predict where the next stroke would land on his body made it harder to keep from crying. Even walls look like doorways when your vision is blurred with tears. One term he had run out without his bag after dropping it twice while zigzagging away from Mr. Bísádé’s whip. Halfway through his first term at Glorious Destiny, Ẹniọlá had refused to go to school on the Monday Mr. Bísádé threatened to start flogging people. His father had been away in Ìbàdàn for some job interview that morning, but when he returned a few days later, he’d knelt before Ẹniọlá and pleaded with him to go back to school and stay in class until the minute he was asked to leave. Every drop of knowledge counts, he’d said, pressing his forehead against Ẹniọlá’s while he spoke. The scars will fade, but what you learn is yours for life. Nobody can take your certificates from you. This morning, his father had not left the bed when Ẹniọlá set out for school with Bùsọ́lá. Did he still believe what he had said back then when he still spoke in sentences instead of grunts and monosyllables? What if he no longer did and Ẹniọlá’s suffering meant nothing to the man he was hoping to please and make happy? Ẹniọlá capped his Biro, shut his geography notebook and put both in his bag. His class had just one exit and it was next to the blackboard. There was no way to leave without distracting Mrs. Isong from the note she was copying out on the board. For all nine terms of his junior secondary school years, he’d repeated his father’s words under his breath while Mr. Bísádé, always that wicked Mr. Bísádé, slapped a whip, cane or belt against his body before commanding him to get out of the class and leave the school premises. By his first term in senior secondary, he had replaced the sound of his father’s voice with a scene from his future. In this future he is an engineer, doctor or politician who can afford to drive a new Mercedes-Benz. Not secondhand new, but brand-new, tear-rubber new. Most important, he is married to a woman who could be Fúnkẹ́ Akíndélé’s twin. One day, with his wife beside him and their two children in the back seat, while it’s raining so much people are wondering if the sky might collapse under the weight of water, he drives past Mr. Bísádé without stopping to offer him a ride. He speeds past him even though their eyes meet and Mr. Bísádé


but he paused before he poured that odd red mess into it. Danny set down Bernadette’s old Dutch oven and jogged down the hall. The old man could sense death in the pot, catastrophe. Stop. Stop before it’s too late. He swiped at it, trying to knock it from the stove, willing himself back into the world, just for a moment, a second. Just give me the strength to save him. But he was weak, useless, no one and nothing. Danny returned, carrying that ugly keepsake box, Arlington Rubber Boots emblazoned on the porcelain lid. He’d kept it on his desk. He’d let Danny play with it as a kid. Sometimes he’d surprise him by putting a quarter in it, or a piece of gum, a blue pebble from the back garden, nothing at all. Danny had believed the box was magic. Now he poured the poison into it. Stop, he wanted to cry, Oh, please, Danny, stop. But the boy drank. Alex stumbled forward, knocking into the dining room table and nearly toppling before she caught herself on the edge. It was too much, the images too clear. She crumpled to her knees and vomited on the inlaid floor, trying to get her head to stop spinning, trying to peel away all of the past Black Elms and only see the present. The doorbell rang again, an accusation. “Coming!” she called. She made herself stand and lurch to the powder room by the kitchen. She rinsed her mouth, splashed water on her face, drew her hair back into a low, tight ponytail. “For fuck’s sake, Cosmo, get away from that.” The cat was sniffing around the pool of vomit. “Help me out here.” And Cosmo, as if he’d understood, did something he’d never done before: He leapt into her arms. She tucked him carefully against her, hiding his singed fur. “The barbarians are at the gate,” she whispered. “Let’s do this.” Again the bell rang. Alex thought of who she wanted to be in this moment, and it was Salome, the president of Wolf’s Head she’d had to frighten into giving up use of the temple room. Rich, beautiful, used to getting her way. The kind of girl Darlington would date if he had no taste. She opened the door slowly, in no rush, and blinked at Darlington’s parents as if they’d woken her from a nap. “Yeah?” “Who are you?” The woman—Harper, the name came with Alex’s doubled vision, her sight coupled with the old man’s eyes—was tall, lean, and dressed in perfectly tailored wool trousers, a silk blouse, and pearls. The man—contempt, pure and seething, rose up at the sight of him. He looked so much like Danny, Daniel, Darlington. So much like me. And yet he looked nothing like any of them. Alex had met a lot of low-level cons in her life, people who were always looking for the shortcut, the easy fix. They were perfect marks. “Alexandra,” she said, her voice bored, her hand stroking Cosmo’s fur. “I’m watching the house for Darlington while he’s in


at once. "Over the other side, my man," said Mr. Bunting. And "Please shut that door," said Mr. Cuss irritably. "All right," said the intruder, as it seemed, in a low voice curiously different from the huskiness of its first enquiry. "Right you are," said the intruder in the former voice. "Stand clear!" and he vanished and closed the door. "A sailor, I should judge," said Mr. Bunting. "Amusing fellows they are. Stand clear! indeed. A nautical term referring to his getting back out of the room, I suppose." "I daresay so," said Cuss. "My nerves are all loose to-day. It quite made me jump--the door opening like that." Mr. Bunting smiled as if he had not jumped. "And now," he said with a sigh, "these books." "One minute," said Cuss, and went and locked the door. "Now I think we are safe from interruption." Some one sniffed as he did so. "One thing is indisputable," said Bunting, drawing up a chair next to that of Cuss. "There certainly have been very strange things happen in Iping during the last few days--very strange. I cannot of course believe in this absurd invisibility story--" "It's incredible," said Cuss, "--incredible. But the fact remains that I saw--I certainly saw right down his sleeve--" "But did you--are you sure? Suppose a mirror, for instance,-- hallucinations are so easily produced. I don't know if you have ever seen a really good conjuror--" "I won't argue again," said Cuss. "We've thrashed that out, Bunting. And just now there's these books--Ah! here's some of what I take to be Greek! Greek letters certainly." He pointed to the middle of the page. Mr. Bunting flushed slightly and brought his face nearer, apparently finding some difficulty with his glasses. Suddenly he became aware of a strange feeling at the nape of his neck. He tried to raise his head, and encountered an immovable resistance. The feeling was a curious pressure, the grip of a heavy, firm hand, and it bore his chin irresistibly to the table. "Don't move, little men," whispered a voice, "or I'll brain you both!" He looked into the face of Cuss, close to his own, and each saw a horrified reflection of his own sickly astonishment. "I'm sorry to handle you roughly," said the Voice, "but it's unavoidable. "Since when did you learn to pry into an investigator's private memoranda?" said the Voice; and two chins struck the table simultaneously and two sets of teeth rattled. "Since when did you learn to invade the private rooms of a man in misfortune?" and the concussion was repeated. "Where have they put my clothes? "Listen," said the Voice. "The windows are fastened and I've taken the key out of the door. I am a fairly strong man, and I have the poker handy--besides being invisible. There's not the slightest doubt that I could kill you both and get away quite easily if I wanted to--do you understand? Very well. If I let you go will you promise not to try any nonsense and do what I tell you?"


broken by Hannah, who stalked in, laid two hot turnovers on the table, and stalked out again. These turnovers were an institution, and the girls called them `muffs',for they had no others and found the hot pies very comforting to their hands on cold mornings. Hannah never forgot to make them, no matter how busy or grumpy she might be, for the walk was long and bleak. The poor things got no other lunch and were seldom home before two. "Cuddle your cats and get over your headache, Bethy. Goodbye, Marmee. We are a set of rascals this morning, but we'll come home regular angels. Now then, Meg!" And Jo tramped away, feeling that the pilgrims were not setting out as they ought to do. They always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was always at the window to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. Somehow it seemed as if they couldn't have got through the day without that, for whatever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that motherly face was sure to affect them like sunshine. "If Marmee shook her fist instead of kissing her hand to us, it would serve us right, for more ungrateful wretches than we are were never seen," cried Jo, taking a remorseful satisfaction in the snowy walk and bitter wind. "Don't use such dreadful expressions," replied Meg from the depths of the veil in which she had shrouded herself like a nun sick of the world. "I like good strong words that mean something," replied Jo, catching her hat as it took a leap off her head preparatory to flying away altogether. "Call yourself any names you like, but I am neither a rascal nor a wretch and I don't choose to be called so." "You're a blighted being, and decidedly cross today because you can't sit in the lap of luxury all the time. Poor dear, just wait till I make my fortune, and you shall revel in carriages and ice cream and high-heeled slippers, and posies, and red-headed boys to dance with." "How ridiculous you are, Jo!" But Meg laughed at the nonsense and felt better in spite of herself. "Lucky for you I am, for if I put on crushed airs and tried to be dismal, as you do, we should be in a nice state. Thank goodness, I can always find something funny to keep me up. Don't croak any more, but come home jolly, there's a dear." Jo gave her sister an encouraging pat on the shoulder as they parted for the day, each going a different way, each hugging her little warm turnover, and each trying to be cheerful in spite of wintry weather, hard work, and the unsatisfied desires of pleasure-loving youth. When Mr. March lost his property in trying to help an unfortunate friend,the two oldest girls begged to be allowed to do something toward their own support, at least. Believing that they could not begin too early to cultivate energy, industry, and independence, their parents consented, and both


different way. I decided I’d never again try to date anyone at TNO, which admittedly might have been a bit of a tree falling in the forest situation. This is all a (very very) long way of saying that after being married to a guy who didn’t like what made me me, and then being friends with a guy who adored me but didn’t want to make out with me, I don’t trust my own instincts. Both those situations scrambled my brain, and I know it’s a small sample size, but I decided to be done with that shit. And now our emails are scrambling me again. from: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> to: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:41 AM subject: Actually This might sound corny, but thank you for telling me all of that. I’m glad I know it. There are tons of things I want to respond to, but the one that feels the most urgent now is why are our emails scrambling your brain? from: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> to: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:43 AM subject: Actually At the risk of destroying my favorite hobby of quarantine, because I’m in danger of confusing the romance of emailing with the romance of romance. from: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> to: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:44 AM subject: Actually Why wouldn’t this be the romance of romance? from: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> to: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:45 AM subject: Actually Because of the Danny Horst Rule? from: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> to: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:46 AM subject: Actually Didn’t I tell you in 2018 I don’t believe in that? from: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> to: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:49 AM subject: Actually I actually don’t think I’m particularly insecure about my appearance. For both our sakes, I’ll refrain from inventorying my face and body and just say that while of course I have some criticisms of myself, I feel lucky to be healthy, and never more so than now. I’m also pretty sure it would disrupt the space-time continuum for a world-famous singer who looks like you to get involved with a TV writer who looks like me. from: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> to: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:51 AM subject: Actually Sometimes, and this is one of your charms, it’s hard for me to tell how much you’re kidding. But I’m really attracted to you, and I have been since that pitch meeting in Nigel’s office. from: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> to: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:52 AM subject: Actually Sometimes it’s also hard for me to tell how much I’m kidding. But you didn’t look so bad at that pitch meeting, either. from: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> to: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> date: Jul 26, 2020, 12:52 AM subject: Actually I realize this also might disrupt the space-time continuum but can I just call you right now? CHAPTER 3 August 2020 At the Hampton Inn in Albuquerque, New Mexico, halfway between Kansas


all love Mick—I done went and created a place where—whatEVER you like, whatEVER you crave—you can, you can, YOU CAN GET…SATISFACTION!” There’s something happening on the stage level that I’ve never seen before. The tables are sliding apart and an object is rising up out of the floor. An enclosed metal frame four metres by four. Or, no. Not a frame. A cage. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Vic has one hand flung out over her head like a prophet. “Here at Victor’s we like to think we can make anything happen for you, make everyone happy…but dis-agree-ments. Do. Arise. “I love it when something tasty ARISES. Don’t you?” A fat wink, white teeth flashing. She only comes alive in front of the crowd. Vic was never a hooker. She was never a hitman either, whatever you may have heard. She never ran guns out of Lisbon and she never divorced a billionaire. She was a televangelist. It’s not even a secret, yet somehow no one knows but me. “AND TONIGHT…we have something a little special to whet your appetite. Oh YES WE DO.” The cage slides into place, and the door opens with a massive crash. “A DUEL! For the honour of—well now. I wonder. WHICH OF YOU WILL STEP INTO THE CAGE?” The spotlight picks out the heroes and they love it. She jumps on him, wraps her legs around his hips and drives her tongue into his mouth, then bucks off again and raises his hand in hers: “WE DO EVERYTHING…TOGETHER!” Vic throws back her head and lets out another mad laugh. “OF COURSE YOU DO! Ladies and gentlemen—and others more intriguingly complex! IN THE RED CORNER WE HAVE THE BOLD! THE GORGEOUS! THE MUSCULAR, SALTY AND DELICIOUS! THE AFFRONTED…” she leans down and listens “MAC AND MINI!” Laughter. “Well, that’s not their fault, they hardly knew they were coming out to fight this evening. They had something ENTIRELY different in mind…” she grabs the man by the ass in passing. Huge laughter from the room as Mac jolts upright, grinning in outrage. “AAAAND THAT’S THE STAKE! IF THEY WIN…THEY GET TO TAKE THEIR PLAYTHING HOME…IF THEY LOSE…” she stretches it out, staring at the couple, who have just realised there’s a downside in this for them and don’t like it. Too late to back out now. The room loves their loss of confidence. Vic leers, taking her hand off Mac’s ass to flick Mini’s armoured skirt up. “COMMUNITY SERVICE!” A roar of approval. She walks down towards the cage, the mic trailing its long tail behind her. “AND HERE HE IS…THE APPLE OF DISCORD! THE PRIVATE, THE PRUDISH, THE PRIGGISH OBJECT OF THEIR THWARTED AFFECTIONS…” And now the spotlight’s on me. The room’s laughing again. Vic nods, palm down. “I know! I know! He don’t look like much. But a girl wants what a girl wants. We all have URGES don’t we? Now myself…these days…cookies and a glass of milk. A good book…And two or three of my favourite lovers to warm eiderdown! But for now: what’s your name,


How about that hour of darkness in which the power of evil is exalted?" As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness. "My God, what's that, Watson?" "I don't know. It's a sound they have on the moor. I heard it once before." It died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood straining our ears, but nothing came. "Watson," said the baronet, "it was the cry of a hound." My blood ran cold in my veins, for there was a break in his voice which told of the sudden horror which had seized him. "What do they call this sound?" he asked. "Who?" "The folk on the countryside." "Oh, they are ignorant people. Why should you mind what they call it?" "Tell me, Watson. What do they say of it?" I hesitated but could not escape the question. "They say it is the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles." He groaned and was silent for a few moments. "A hound it was," he said at last, "but it seemed to come from miles away, over yonder, I think." "It was hard to say whence it came." "It rose and fell with the wind. Isn't that the direction of the great Grimpen Mire?" "Yes, it is." "Well, it was up there. Come now, Watson, didn't you think yourself that it was the cry of a hound? I am not a child. You need not fear to speak the truth." "Stapleton was with me when I heard it last. He said that it might be the calling of a strange bird." "No, no, it was a hound. My God, can there be some truth in all these stories? Is it possible that I am really in danger from so dark a cause? You don't believe it, do you, Watson?" "No, no." "And yet it was one thing to laugh about it in London, and it is another to stand out here in the darkness of the moor and to hear such a cry as that. And my uncle! There was the footprint of the hound beside him as he lay. It all fits together. I don't think that I am a coward, Watson, but that sound seemed to freeze my very blood. Feel my hand!" It was as cold as a block of marble. "You'll be all right to-morrow." "I don't think I'll get that cry out of my head. What do you advise that we do now?" "Shall we turn back?" "No, by thunder; we have come out to get our man, and we will


bothering him. This incident has convinced him that all secrets come to light eventually, and he's decided to clear his conscience at last. Notice his steady gaze as he looks at her, and his firm language. He talks explicitly about God, rather than the vague fortune he trusted to years ago. Yet he conceives of God as "God Almighty"--a stern, powerful judge, much different from Dolly's benevolent, mysterious image of God. What's your opinion of Godfrey now? For a moment their eyes meet directly. Godfrey tells his secret, in plain, direct language. Nancy's reaction is hard to gauge--she turns pale but sits quietly. Godfrey seems scared of her, and he goes on talking, trying to justify what he did. The suspense builds as Nancy remains silent. But when she speaks, her reaction is surprising. She doesn't condemn Godfrey for his former marriage or for hiding the secret. Instead she focuses on the present. Now that she knows that Eppie is Godfrey's child, she wants to adopt her. She only regrets that Godfrey kept this secret so long, depriving them of the child for many years. She knows attachments build over time, and lost time can't be recovered. Godfrey is amazed that he didn't predict Nancy's reaction better. Have you ever had a moment like this--when someone you thought you knew inside and out revealed new depths? If so, you know how unsettling it is. Godfrey probes Nancy's feelings, testing whether she really disapproves of him or not. But Nancy, like Dolly, believes that the pattern of events is mysterious and that people can't judge the ultimate outcome of their actions. She doesn't completely forgive Godfrey, but she accepts what's done as done. They agree upon their duty now--to go to Marner's cottage and offer to adopt Eppie. ^^^^^^^^^^ SILAS MARNER: CHAPTER 19 Eliot prevented you from thinking too much about Silas in the previous chapter. But she moves her scene now to Silas' cottage, where Silas sits contentedly with Eppie. His face is transformed by excitement, because his stolen money has been recovered. Now he has both his treasures. But he explains to Eppie that she has become more precious to him than his gold ever was. He would rather not have the gold back, if it meant losing Eppie. He speaks as though some conscious power took the money away, sent Eppie to him, and then returned the money for him and Eppie to use. Ironically, just as he's saying how forsaken he'd feel if he ever lost her, a knock comes at the door. Eppie opens it to see Mr. and Mrs. Cass, as she politely calls them. She doesn't yet know what you know--that they've come to take her from Silas. In this scene, Eliot lets you know each character's feelings and reactions at each point. In fact, she scarcely describes the physical scene at all, concentrating instead on the inner drama. The speeches themselves are dramatic, but Eliot adds to this by letting you feel the emotional currents that run beneath them. Godfrey begins by referring to that