Andy says, horrified that Nick has misunderstood him in this way. “I don’t understand you. I’m not even sure I want to understand you.” “If you think I have any trouble spending time with gay men, you haven’t been paying the slightest bit of attention,” Andy says. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.” “Do you think I want to get hurt? Or arrested? Or publicly humiliated? Do you think I want any of that? Do you really think you get to decide what kinds of risks I take?” He throws his cigarette to the sidewalk and grinds it under his shoe. “I repeat, this was your idea.” Andy swallows hard and scrambles to find a way to salvage the situation, and decides that the only way out is with absolute honesty. This is jumping in with both feet, reaching toward something he wants. “I could do it.” “What?” Nick lights another cigarette, swears, and hands it to Andy before lighting another one for himself. It’s not too late to backtrack, but the truth is gnawing its way out. He wants to tell Nick. All week, since admitting it to himself, he’s wanted to tell Nick, because not saying it feels like it’s taking far more of an effort than it ought to. Why shouldn’t he tell his queer friend that he’s also queer? The more he thinks about it, the weirder it seems not to say anything. And, yeah, he has an ulterior motive, which is that he’s hoping that Nick will want to— He can’t finish the sentence, not even in his head, but his thoughts supply a series of images: Nick’s hands on him, Nick’s mouth on his, Andy’s fingers in Nick’s hair. But that would be good for both of them, right? It could be—nice, maybe. It would be nicer than whatever goes on in restrooms. Safer, too. “I could . . .” Christ. The fact that he still can’t think of how to end that sentence can’t be a good sign. “I could take care of you,” he says, the words coming out in one crazy rush. “What?” Nick’s eyes are wide and his voice is hoarse. “I could—if you wanted—” “No,” Nick says, looking horror-stricken. “Absolutely not. Have you lost your mind, Andy?” Well, probably, but he doesn’t think now is the time to say so. “It’s an offer,” he says, trying to get closer to honesty, nearer to the admission that he wants Nick. The words are right there, but he can’t make himself say them. “I can’t deal with this—whatever this is—right now. I’m going for a walk.” Nick turns on his heel. “Wait.” Nick halts and looks over his shoulder. “I want to. I mean. I . . . want to. In the way that anyone wants these things.” And that probably would sound a hell of a lot better if he weren’t such a prude, but at least it gets the point across. Nick laughs, though, so maybe it hadn’t. “You don’t know what you want.” “Excuse me?” “You’re not thinking


He was speaking nonsense. She couldn’t become a lady on a whim! “I don’t understand,” she admitted. He dropped his hand and turned to stare at her, his gaze so intense that it seemed to burn like the sun, which currently sat behind a thick layer of clouds. “Neither do I,” he said, but he sounded surer of himself than he ever had. “But I am madly in love with you and couldn’t watch you lose your freedom to a pathetic lout like Granger. No offense intended,” he added, despite him most likely definitely intending offense. He narrowed his eyes at Mr. Granger, who had poked his head out the door, probably trying to figure out what was going on and why Lucy hadn’t been robbed yet. She was still a little lost, though she was pretty sure Simon just told her he loved her. Then she thought back on his first question, and she suddenly felt faint. “You want me to be Lady Calloway?” she whispered, even though that was awfully presumptive of her. He’d never actually said those words. He was simply here to rescue her, nothing more. But Simon smiled and tucked some of her hair behind her ear since it had come loose from its coiffure sometime during the night. His fingers lingered at her cheek, barely touching her and sending shivers through her. “I want you to be by my side and force me to take leisure time, and I want to be the one who makes you so happy that you forget you were ever otherwise.” Lucy leaned into his touch, which seemed to dissolve any remaining hesitation he might have had. Determination filled his hazel eyes as he looked at her. “And I never want to have to say goodbye to you.” He captured her mouth with his without warning, pulling her into a kiss every bit as breath-stealing as the last one had been. Lucy fell into that kiss but got only a moment of it before something jerked her back. “What is the meaning of this?” Mr. Granger demanded, dragging Lucy to her feet. “Miss Hayes, you can’t—” “I believe she can do whatever she wants,” Simon said. He hadn’t moved, sitting there on the ground with his chest heaving, but he smiled up at Lucy as if he had never been happier. “You had best let go of her, Granger.” Lucy tried to tug her arm free, but Mr. Granger held fast. “Please,” she added, hoping if she sounded small, he would listen to her. She hoped Mr. Granger would never hurt her, but she knew he would not let her spurn him without putting up a fight. She needed to coax him into letting her go. “We can discuss this.” “There is nothing to discuss, Miss Hayes. You have already agreed to be my wife.” Before Lucy could say anything, Simon barked out a laugh. “Did she ever say those words?” “What?” Mr. Granger made a face of disgust, as if Simon’s question were utterly offensive. Simon sat up straighter, and


man or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with gentleness. "Pip is that hearty welcome," said Joe, "to go free with his services, to honour and fortun', as no words can tell him. But if you think as Money can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child - what come to the forge - and ever the best of friends!--" O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to, I see you again, with your muscular blacksmith's arm before your eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying away. O dear good faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle of an angel's wing! But I encouraged Joe at the time. I was lost in the mazes of my future fortunes, and could not retrace the by-paths we had trodden together. I begged Joe to be comforted, for (as he said) we had ever been the best of friends, and (as I said) we ever would be so. Joe scooped his eyes with his disengaged wrist, as if he were bent on gouging himself, but said not another word. Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who recognized in Joe the village idiot, and in me his keeper. When it was over, he said, weighing in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing: "Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance. No half measures with me. If you mean to take a present that I have it in charge to make you, speak out, and you shall have it. If on the contrary you mean to say--" Here, to his great amazement, he was stopped by Joe's suddenly working round him with every demonstration of a fell pugilistic purpose. "Which I meantersay," cried Joe, "that if you come into my place bull-baiting and badgering me, come out! Which I meantersay as sech if you're a man, come on! Which I meantersay that what I say, I meantersay and stand or fall by!" I drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable; merely stating to me, in an obliging manner and as a polite expostulatory notice to any one whom it might happen to concern, that he were not a going to be bull-baited and badgered in his own place. Mr. Jaggers had risen when Joe demonstrated, and had backed near the door. Without evincing any inclination to come in again, he there delivered his valedictory remarks. They were these: "Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here - as you are to be a gentleman - the better. Let it stand for this day week, and you shall receive my printed address in the meantime. You can take a hackney-coach at the stage-coach office in London, and come straight to me. Understand, that I express no opinion, one way or other, on the trust I undertake. I am paid for undertaking it,


their wounded, had given out just before dawn. They had cut it up with lasguns and hidden the pieces, then worked their way down into this hiding place at the edge of the basin. Hawat had only a rough idea of their location--some two hundred kilometers southeast of Arrakeen. The main traveled ways between the Shield Wall sietch communities were somewhere south of them. The Fremen across from Hawat threw back his hood and stillsuit cap to reveal sandy hair and beard. The hair was combed straight back from a high, thin forehead. He had the unreadable total blue eyes of the spice diet. Beard and mustache were stained at one side of the mouth, his hair matted there by pressure of the looping catchtube from his nose plugs. The man removed his plugs, readjusted them. He rubbed at a scar beside his nose. "If you cross the sink here this night," the Fremen said, "you must not use shields. There is a break in the wall . . . " He turned on his heels, pointed south. " . . . there, and it is open sand down to the erg. Shields will attract a . . . " He hesitated. ". . . worm. They don't often come in here, but a shield will bring one every time." He said worm, Hawat thought. He was going to say something else. What? And what does he want of us? Hawat sighed. He could not recall ever before being this tired. It was a muscle weariness that energy pills were unable to ease. Those damnable Sardaukar! With a self-accusing bitterness, he faced the thought of the soldier-fanatics and the Imperial treachery they represented. His own Mentat assessment of the data told him how little chance he had ever to present evidence of this treachery before the High Council of the Landsraad where justice might be done. "Do you wish to go to the smugglers?" the Fremen asked. "Is it possible?" "The way is long." "Fremen don't like to say no," Idaho had told him once. Hawat said: "You haven't yet told me whether your people can help my wounded." "They are wounded." The same damned answer every time! "We know they're wounded!" Hawat snapped. "That's not the--" "Peace, friend," the Fremen cautioned. "What do your wounded say? Are there those among them who can see the water need of your tribe?" "We haven't talked about water," Hawat said. "We--" "I can understand your reluctance," the Fremen said. "They are your friends, your tribesmen. Do you have water?" "Not enough." The Fremen gestured to Hawat's tunic, the skin exposed beneath it. "You were caught in-sietch, without your suits. You must make a water decision, friend." "Can we hire your help?" The Fremen shrugged. "You have no water." He glanced at the group behind Hawat. "How many of your wounded would you spend?" Hawat fell silent, staring at the man. He could see as a Mentat that their communication was out of phase. Word-sounds were not being linked up here in the normal manner.


I don't want to, this time. I want to hold on to this funny thing. God, it's gotten big on me. I don't know what it is. I'm so damned unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don't know why I feel like I'm putting on weight. I feel fat. I feel like I've been saving up a lot of things, and don't know what. I might even start reading books." "They'd put you in jail, wouldn't they?" She looked at him as if he were behind the glass wall. He began to put on his clothes, moving restlessly about the bedroom. "Yes, and it might be a good idea. Before I hurt someone. Did you hear Beatty? Did you listen to him? He knows all the answers. He's right. Happiness is important. Fun is everything. And yet I kept sitting there saying to myself, I'm not happy, I'm not happy." "I am." Mildred's mouth beamed. "And proud of it." "I'm going to do something," said Montag. "I don't even know what yet, but I'm going to do something big." "I'm tired of listening to this junk," said Mildred, turning from him to the announcer again Montag touched the volume control in the wall and the announcer was speechless. "Millie?" He paused. "This is your house as well as mine. I feel it's only fair that I tell you something now. I should have told you before, but I wasn't even admitting it to myself. I have something I want you to see, something I've put away and hid during the past year, now and again, once in a while, I didn't know why, but I did it and I never told you." He took hold of a straight?backed chair and moved it slowly and steadily into the hall near the front door and climbed up on it and stood for a moment like a statue on a pedestal, his wife standing under him, waiting. Then he reached up and pulled back the grille of the air?conditioning system and reached far back inside to the right and moved still another sliding sheet of metal and took out a book. Without looking at it he dropped it to the floor. He put his hand back up and took out two books and moved his hand down and dropped the two books to the floor. He kept moving his hand and dropping books, small ones, fairly large ones, yellow, red, green ones. When he was done he looked down upon some twenty books lying at his wife's feet. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't really think. But now it looks as if we're in this together." Mildred backed away as if she were suddenly confronted by a pack of mice that had come up out of the floor. He could hear her breathing rapidly and her face was paled out and her eyes were fastened wide. She said his name over, twice, three times. Then moaning, she ran forward, seized a book and ran toward the kitchen incinerator. He caught her, shrieking. He held her


me, miss." My counselor couldn't read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my pocket. "Is he really BAD?" The tears were still in her eyes. "Do the gentlemen say so?" "They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning." Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on: "That he's an injury to the others." At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly flamed up. "Master Miles! HIM an injury?" There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the spot, sarcastically. "To his poor little innocent mates!" "It's too dreadful," cried Mrs. Grose, "to say such cruel things! Why, he's scarce ten years old." "Yes, yes; it would be incredible." She was evidently grateful for such a profession. "See him, miss, first. THEN believe it!" I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. "You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her," she added the next moment--"LOOK at her!" I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy of nice "round o's," now presented herself to view at the open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of Mrs. Grose's comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement. Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, holding her there with a hand on her arm. "I take what you said to me at noon as a declaration that YOU'VE never known him to be bad." She threw


said Bunny, reaching for Marion’s suitcase and lugging it up the steps. Marion followed, unsure of what exactly was going on. The door led to a large parlor where a group of girls around their age were chatting loudly, seated on couches and chairs that looked like they’d been there since the last century. Posters from Broadway shows hung on the walls, along with photos of famous stage actresses, including Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt. The clatter of dishes drifted up from a lower floor. “Where are we?” asked Marion. “The Rehearsal Club. A boardinghouse for girls in the performing arts.” “This is where you live?” “Sure thing. Me and four other Rockettes. Mrs. Fleming, who runs the place, loves us because we get a steady paycheck and never fall behind on rent. The other girls are actress and singer wannabes, with a couple of comedians and opera singers thrown into the mix, but we try not to hold it against them. Comes with room and board.” To live right in the middle of New York, within walking distance of the theater, was a dream. “How much?” “Eighteen dollars a week. Leaves you with more than enough extra for fun. Speaking of fun, I’m going out with my beau tonight, along with a friend of his. You can join us, and we’ll celebrate your new home.” Marion looked about. Living in a boardinghouse with actresses? Her father would have a heart attack. On the train into the city, she’d imagined finding a room at the top of a brownstone owned by an elderly lady with a cat or two. But she didn’t know how to even begin to find accommodations like that. Her life had been so sheltered, she was ashamed to admit. “I’m not sure.” “Not sure about what, the Club or dinner tonight?” “Maybe both?” Bunny looked at her like she was crazy. “Let’s go find Mrs. Fleming; she’ll give you all the details, and then you can decide, all right?” Mrs. Fleming’s office was located at the back of the building, a small room that held a desk, several metal filing cabinets, and an overstuffed brown couch that overwhelmed the space. A gray-haired woman in a simple gray dress sat behind the desk, but when she looked up and smiled, her face flooded with warmth. “What can I do for you, dear?” she asked Bunny. “Mrs. Fleming, my friend Marion here is a new Rockette and needs a place to stay. There’s an extra bed in my room, I’d be happy to share with her.” “Why don’t you have a seat?” said Mrs. Fleming to Marion, gesturing to the sofa. “I’ve got to get back to Radio City,” said Bunny. “Meet me at the stage door at ten and we’ll grab dinner.” Bunny blew Marion a kiss and disappeared. After she was gone, Mrs. Fleming picked up a clipboard and a pen. “Congratulations on becoming a Rockette. Now, what’s your full name?” “Marion Brooks.” “Is that your stage name or your real name?” “Real name.” “Lucky you. I’ve heard


know that. She just marches on.” Maud heard the grief in her voice. “Then catch up to her,” she said. Peter and Ella were still standing in the doorway when she walked back to the house. “What the bloody hell was that?” Peter said. But Maud barely heard the words. She’d noticed Ella beside him, hands in fists, body stiff, looking more furious than Gloria. “You’re doing it again,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re doing it again.” “Sweetheart,” Maud said, “what do you mean?” “Gabriel.” Ella looked at Peter. “What about him?” Maud said. Here it comes, she thought. No more lying. No more pretending. For either of us. “You texted him when I was at his place. About meeting by the hedge.” Ella took a shuddering breath. “I followed you that day. I was there.” Maud dug her fingernails into her closed hands to keep herself there, to not turn and run as fast as she could down the steps, get in her car, and flee Ella’s agonized face, flee the images flashing through her head: her back against the tree, Gabriel thrusting into her, her hands clutching his back, her head rubbing against the bark. “Oh, Ella,” she said. Peter put his arm around Ella’s shoulders. “Love?” he said. “What are you talking about?” “Daddy,” Ella said, hanging her head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to know.” She started to cry, and Maud knew from the seizing of Peter’s face that he understood. “It’s all right,” he said to Ella. “Everything will be all right.” “All this time, you kept this to yourself?” Maud said. Weeping, Ella nodded. “I only told Rita. I wasn’t even going to tell her. It came out after I had that nightmare about the hospital. She wanted me to say something to you. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Dad to know.” She peered up at Peter. “Daddy,” she wailed, “I didn’t want you to know.” Peter tucked her head into his chest, hiding her face from Maud. “You don’t need to take care of me, love,” he said. “I take care of you.” When Maud moved toward them, he held up his hand. “Go.” “Ella,” Maud said, “I’m so, so sorry. Please let me hold you.” “I want you to go too,” Ella said, sobbing. “Please go away.” One arm still around Ella, Peter grabbed Maud’s purse from the entryway table, threw it at her feet, and slammed the door. When she was down the stairs, in her car, Maud’s phone started buzzing with a voice mail from Alice. “I’m calling from a pay phone. Gloria just went nuts. She might show up there.” She drove down the hill without attaching her seat belt, into the dusk, barely seeing the road, onto the freeway, into the bare, sun-baked hills strung with utility lines. Her head spun. She thought about going to Annette’s, but then she’d have to confess to her sister that she’d lied about sleeping with Gabriel, and the thought of hurting someone else she loved was too


Rebecca’s eyes, even though it was dark. If the woman was willing to sleep on the cold, hard floor, perhaps her fears were not unwarranted. Rebecca truly believed what she had heard Mr. Granger say about carrying Lucy off and forcing her into marriage. Lucy could hardly stomach the idea. “You said Mr. Granger was hoping to intercept us,” she said. “Perhaps he was simply conducting business in the area and you were mistaken.” Rebecca shook her head, helping Lucy to her feet. “He never leaves Town this time of year.” That was true. Over the years, Jonathan Granger had waxed long about his business ventures, and he was always particularly adamant about remaining in London during the summers even though most of the ton tended to gravitate back toward their country estates until the next Season. Or perhaps he’d simply remained in Town because that was where Lucy had been. “What was he planning to do if we reached the Winthrops’ before he found us?” Lucy asked, trying not to picture the man dragging her from a coach in the middle of nowhere. She failed, and the thought made her shudder again. Rebecca shrugged. “I didn’t hear anything about that, but . . . you know Mr. Granger. What he wants, he gets.” As much as Lucy wanted to disregard that thought, she couldn’t find an argument. Yes, he had remained within propriety over the years, but that had been when she was employed in his brother’s house. In his business boastings, he had made it clear he was a man who didn’t often take no for an answer. If she finally found her way to the Winthrops’ home, would he be there waiting for her? “Are you sure?” she whispered. Rebecca nodded. “Robert Granger and his wife are decent people, but his brother . . . none of us belowstairs liked him. Us maids, in particular. He always looked at us like . . .” Lucy didn’t want to know how he looked at them; she had been on the receiving end of plenty of his looks, and she didn’t like it at all. “What am I to do?” she asked. “Without a recommendation, finding employment anywhere else will be difficult, if not impossible. You know that.” Rebecca took hold of her hand. “We can stay here a while longer.” Jaw dropping, Lucy tore her hand free. “We can’t—” “Only until Mr. Granger has tried finding you, as I know he will. It shouldn’t take him more than a day or two to arrive at the Winthrops’ and find you missing. Then he’ll move on.” “But—” “Where else can you go?” As harsh as the question sounded, Lucy knew it was a good one. Rebecca knew well the difficulties of living without money, and seeing as Lucy had little, she couldn’t afford a journey of any considerable length. Remaining nearby without some sort of place to hide, like here with the Calloways, would make it easier for Mr. Granger to find her. She didn’t want to believe she was in


of the Lethe armory?” “Not exactly,” said Dawes, and even in the shadows, Alex could tell she was uncomfortable. “No one wants to claim this. We’re not even sure which society made it or if it’s the work of someone else entirely. There’s just an entry in the book for when it arrived and … its purpose.” Alex felt a chill settle into her. What were they about to see? She sent her mind searching for Grays in case something awful was about to happen, and braced herself as Dawes grabbed hold of one of the cloths. She gave a sharp pull, releasing a cloud of dust. “A model?” Turner asked, sounding almost disappointed. A model of New Haven. Alex recognized the shape of the green with its bisecting lines of protection and three pretty churches immediately. The rest was less familiar. She could identify some of the buildings, the general plan of the streets, but so much was missing. “It’s made out of stone,” Alex realized, running a finger over one of the street names, Chapel, engraved directly into the pavement. “Amethyst,” said Dawes, though it looked more white than purple to Alex’s eye. “That can’t be,” said Turner. “It’s one big slab, no lines, no cracks. You’re telling me this was carved from one piece of stone?” Dawes nodded, and Turner’s frown deepened. “That’s not possible. Let’s say someone could find a piece of amethyst this big, then get it out of a mine, then somehow manage the carving, it would have to weigh over a ton. How did they even get it down here?” “I don’t know,” said Dawes. “It’s possible it was carved right here, and the building went up around it. I don’t even know if it was carved by human hands. There’s really … there’s nothing natural about it.” She uncorked a bottle from her bag and poured it into what looked like a Windex bottle. “I’m going to read from the incantation. You just need to repeat.” “What’s going to happen?” asked Alex. “It’s just going to activate the model.” “Sure,” said Turner. Dawes took out a notebook where she’d transcribed the spell and began to read in Latin. Alex didn’t understand a word of it. “Evigilato Urbs, aperito scelestos.” Dawes gestured for them to repeat and they did their best to follow. “Crimen proquirito parricidii.” Again they tried to echo her. Dawes picked up the spray bottle and squirted it aggressively over the model. Alex and Turner took a step back, and Alex resisted the urge to cover her nose and mouth. The mist smelled faintly of roses, and Alex remembered what the high priest had said about preserving bodies at Book and Snake. Was that what this map was? A corpse that needed to be brought back to life? The cloud of mist drifted down onto the model, and the table seemed to explode into activity. Lights flickered on; a miniature amethyst buggy sped down the streets drawn by gemstone horses; a breeze moved through the tiny stone trees. Red spots began to


fellow, a Lascar, was well paid by me for his rooms, so that I knew that my secret was safe in his possession. "Well, very soon I found that I was saving considerable sums of money. I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could earn 700 pounds a year--which is less than my average takings--but I had exceptional advantages in my power of making up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognized character in the City. All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take 2 pounds. "As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the country, and eventually married, without anyone having a suspicion as to my real occupation. My dear wife knew that I had business in the City. She little knew what. "Last Monday I had finished for the day and was dressing in my room above the opium den when I looked out of my window and saw, to my horror and astonishment, that my wife was standing in the street, with her eyes fixed full upon me. I gave a cry of surprise, threw up my arms to cover my face, and, rushing to my confidant, the Lascar, entreated him to prevent anyone from coming up to me. I heard her voice downstairs, but I knew that she could not ascend. Swiftly I threw off my clothes, pulled on those of a beggar, and put on my pigments and wig. Even a wife's eyes could not pierce so complete a disguise. But then it occurred to me that there might be a search in the room, and that the clothes might betray me. I threw open the window, reopening by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in the bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which was weighted by the coppers which I had just transferred to it from the leather bag in which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of the window, and it disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes would have followed, but at that moment there was a rush of constables up the stair, and a few minutes after I found, rather, I confess, to my relief, that instead of being identified as Mr. Neville St. Clair, I was arrested as his murderer. "I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I was determined to preserve my disguise as long as possible, and hence my preference for a dirty face. Knowing that my wife would be terribly anxious, I slipped off my ring and confided it to the Lascar at a moment when no constable was watching me, together with a hurried scrawl, telling her that she had no cause to fear." "That note only reached her yesterday," said Holmes. "Good God! What a week she must have spent!" "The police have watched this


met--somewhat less constantly than before; and thus two or three weeks went by. The end of September drew near, and she could see in his eye that he might ask her again. His plan of procedure was different now--as though he had made up his mind that her negatives were, after all, only coyness and youth startled by the novelty of the proposal. The fitful evasiveness of her manner when the subject was under discussion countenanced the idea. So he played a more coaxing game; and while never going beyond words, or attempting the renewal of caresses, he did his utmost orally. In this way Clare persistently wooed her in undertones like that of the purling milk--at the cow's side, at skimmings, at butter-makings, at cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs--as no milkmaid was ever wooed before by such a man. Tess knew that she must break down. Neither a religious sense of a certain moral validity in the previous union nor a conscientious wish for candour could hold out against it much longer. She loved him so passionately, and he was so godlike in her eyes; and being, though untrained, instinctively refined, her nature cried for his tutelary guidance. And thus, though Tess kept repeating to herself, "I can never be his wife," the words were vain. A proof of her weakness lay in the very utterance of what calm strength would not have taken the trouble to formulate. Every sound of his voice beginning on the old subject stirred her with a terrifying bliss, and she coveted the recantation she feared. His manner was--what man's is not?--so much that of one who would love and cherish and defend her under any conditions, changes, charges, or revelations, that her gloom lessened as she basked in it. The season meanwhile was drawing onward to the equinox, and though it was still fine, the days were much shorter. The dairy had again worked by morning candlelight for a long time; and a fresh renewal of Clare's pleading occurred one morning between three and four. She had run up in her bedgown to his door to call him as usual; then had gone back to dress and call the others; and in ten minutes was walking to the head of the stairs with the candle in her hand. At the same moment he came down his steps from above in his shirt-sleeves and put his arm across the stairway. "Now, Miss Flirt, before you go down," he said peremptorily. "It is a fortnight since I spoke, and this won't do any longer. You MUST tell me what you mean, or I shall have to leave this house. My door was ajar just now, and I saw you. For your own safety I must go. You don't know. Well? Is it to be yes at last?" "I am only just up, Mr Clare, and it is too early to take me to task!" she pouted. "You need not call me Flirt. 'Tis cruel and untrue. Wait till by and by. Please wait till


early morning when he was feeling refreshed and strong after the night's rest. For no reason at all, he had expected that she would show some sign of her experiences, that she would look pale and even ill. He was not prepared for the tall bronzed girl in a cream tussore frock with a black belt who came happily through the door and stood smiling at him. 'Good heavens, Vesper,' he said with a wry gesture of welcome, 'you look absolutely splendid. You must thrive on disaster. How have you managed to get such a wonderful sunburn?' 'I feel very guilty,' she said sitting down beside him. 'But I've been bathing every day while you've been lying here. The doctor said I was to and Head of S said I was to, so, well, I just thought it wouldn't help you for me to be moping away all day long in my room. I've found a wonderful stretch of sand down the coast and I take my lunch and go there every day with a book and I don't come back till the evening. There's a bus that takes me there and back with only a short walk over the dunes, and I've managed to get over the fact that it's on the way down that road to the villa.' Her voice faltered. The mention of the villa had made Bond's eyes flicker. She continued bravely, refusing to be defeated by Bond's lack of response. 'The doctor says it won't be long before you're allowed up. I thought perhaps . . . I thought perhaps I could take you down to this beach later on. The doctor says that bathing would be very good for you.' Bond grunted. 'God knows when I'll be able to bathe,' he said. 'The doctor's talking through his hat. And when I can bathe it would probably be better for me to bathe alone for a bit. I don't want to frighten anybody. Apart from anything else,' he glanced pointedly down the bed, 'my body's a mass of scars and bruises. But you enjoy yourself. There's no reason why you shouldn't enjoy yourself.' Vesper was stung by the bitterness and injustice in his voice. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I just thought . . . I was just trying . . .' Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She swallowed. 'I wanted . . . I wanted to help you get well.' Her voice strangled. She looked piteously at him, facing the accusation in his eyes and in his manner. Then she broke down and buried her face in her hands and sobbed. 'I'm sorry,' she said in a muffled voice. 'I'm really sorry.' With one hand she searched for a handkerchief in her bag. 'It's all my fault,' she dabbed at her eyes. 'I know it's all my fault.' Bond at once relented. He put out a bandaged hand and laid it on her knee. 'It's all right, Vesper. I'm sorry I was so rough. It's just that I was jealous of you in the sunshine while


put the hollow between us two and the other five. Then he looked at me and nodded, as much as to say, “Here is a narrow corner,” as, indeed, I thought it was. Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 276 277 His looks were not quite friendly, and I was so revolted at the pit between us, and nobody screwed up high enough to these constant changes that I could not forbear whispering, offer the first blow. Silver never moved; he watched them, “So you’ve changed sides again.” very upright on his crutch, and looked as cool as ever I saw There was no time left for him to answer in. The bucca- him. He was brave, and no mistake. neers, with oaths and cries, began to leap, one after another, At last Merry seemed to think a speech might help mat- into the pit and to dig with their fingers, throwing the boards ters. aside as they did so. Morgan found a piece of gold. He held “Mates,” says he, “there’s two of them alone there; one’s it up with a perfect spout of oaths. It was a two-guinea piece, the old cripple that brought us all here and blundered us and it went from hand to hand among them for a quarter of down to this; the other’s that cub that I mean to have the a minute. heart of. Now, mates—” “Two guineas!” roared Merry, shaking it at Silver. “That’s He was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant to your seven hundred thousand pounds, is it? You’re the man lead a charge. But just then—crack! crack! crack!— three for bargains, ain’t you? You’re him that never bungled noth- musket-shots flashed out of the thicket. Merry tumbled head ing, you wooden-headed lubber!” foremost into the excavation; the man with the bandage spun “Dig away, boys,” said Silver with the coolest insolence; round like a teetotum and fell all his length upon his side, “you’ll find some pig-nuts and I shouldn’t wonder.” where he lay dead, but still twitching; and the other three “Pig-nuts!” repeated Merry, in a scream. “Mates, do you turned and ran for it with all their might. hear that? I tell you now, that man there knew it all along. Before you could wink, Long John had fired two barrels Look in the face of him and you’ll see it wrote there.” of a pistol into the struggling Merry, and as the man rolled “Ah, Merry,” remarked Silver, “standing for cap’n again? up his eyes at him in the last agony, “George,” said he, “I You’re a pushing lad, to be sure.” reckon I settled you.” But this time everyone was entirely in Merry’s favour. They At the same moment, the doctor, Gray, and Ben Gunn began to scramble out of the excavation, darting furious glances joined us, with smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg- behind them. One thing I observed, which looked well for trees. Contents us: they all got out upon the opposite side from Silver. “Forward!” cried the doctor. “Double quick, my


work face and got Maud a mimosa. The head of another division came over and slapped Peter on the back. Maud hauled up her mouth. She clinked glasses. Twenty minutes later, she set down the glass to text Ella again, Still doing OK? Still wishing you wouldn’t text every five minutes! She swilled the mimosa. As happened at these events, the room divided into suits and dresses, and now she found herself standing with the wife of Peter’s boss and another woman as they lamented their difficult house remodels. One of them hadn’t had a working stove in weeks. Maud tried to look interested. Ella was home alone, and there were knives in the kitchen. She glanced at her phone as the women talked about paint swatches and shower fixtures. With the same honeyed highlights in their shoulder-length hair and the same pampered hands, they looked like twins. Maud felt that she had nothing in common with them, but of course she did—she simply didn’t want to. Honking a rubber horn, the clown was now leading the children out of the restaurant to the beach, a sack over his shoulder. “Kite time,” he hollered as they passed the buffet table where their fathers were huddled. The mothers set down their drinks, put on their coats, and followed. On the ocean, the dots of two surfers bobbed in the waves. The children ran after the stick-and-polyester falcons that soared over the sand, seeking prey in the wrong habitat. The wind whipped Maud’s face. The woman next to her buttoned her designer coat and knotted a silk scarf around her neck. “Who the hell came up with this idea?” she said. “Did they really think we were going to stay inside drinking while some creepy clown takes our kids into the cold?” “They wanted to get rid of the women and children,” another woman said. “They’re probably smoking cigars in there.” Maud texted Ella again. I’m fine MOM! With a final blast of his horn, the clown waved goodbye, shift finished. Still holding her kite, Louise took over leading the group. The other children followed her down the beach, skirting the clutching fingers of tide toward a cluster of objects that, Maud saw as they all drew nearer, weren’t rocks or washed-up redwood trunks as they had seemed. Three baby sea lions, ribs pushing though their mottled skin, eyes dull, lifted their heads, squirmed, dropped back down to the sand. “They’re starving,” someone said. “Poor things.” In a chorus of alarmed exclamations, the children reeled in their kites. A woman called a ranger on her phone and alerted the fathers, several of whom now materialized on the beach. “Climate change,” a woman said. “They come in too far to find food.” “We need to go back to Ella,” Maud told Louise. “We can’t leave them,” Louise said. She had tears in her eyes. “Can’t we do something? Like carry them back into the water?” “Let’s wait for the experts,” Maud said. She texted Peter, who was still inside, and he replied that he’d take


staring at the blood draining from Brody’s lifeless form. “Call 911.” Sloane bends down and feels Brody’s neck for a pulse, realizing her words came out calmer than she meant them to. “My phone’s in the kitchen. The passcode is our anniversary. Tell them we’re starting CPR. It will look better if we do.” “I’ll use mine. It’s upstairs. I have to get dressed anyway.” Ethan rushes out of the room, seemingly in shock over killing Brody in their living room. Sloane hurriedly pats down Brody’s pockets as soon as Ethan is out of sight. She feels two phones, one in his jeans’ pocket and the other in his jacket. Upstairs, she hears Ethan already talking to the 911 operator. She uses Brody’s finger to unlock the phone from Brody’s jacket and taps the messages icon on the home screen. Seeing her texts from earlier, she slips the phone into her scrubs pocket, leaving his other phone untouched. It strikes her that this was fortunate. She would have had to explain her fingerprints if she touched the other one. She hears Ethan’s voice coming down the stairs. “Yes, my wife is doing compressions.” A pause. “No, there was no pulse.” Seconds later, Ethan appears in the living room dressed in a t-shirt and joggers, holding his phone at his side. “I thought you were going to start CPR?” On her knees beside Brody, Sloane sinks back onto her heels. “I said it would look better if we do. It’s not like you gave him a chance to survive. Shooting him in the head like that.” Ethan puts his hands on his head. Sloane notices his hair is starting to gray at the temples. He looks at Brody’s body lying beside her, before his eyes rest on hers. “What happened? Why did you let him in?” “He knocked on the door, and I couldn’t tell who it was. I asked, you know, who’s there?, before opening the door, and he said he was your partner, Jonah. As soon as I unlocked the door, he came rushing in with a gun.” She motions toward the pistol now sitting on the coffee table. Ethan’s eyes trail hers. “He started waving it around, saying crazy things,” she continues. “Just like he did in the garage yesterday. Demanding to know if I’d told you about our affair and why I hadn’t done something to end the investigation. As if I could do anything. I told him to leave, immediately, and then he took a wild shot at me.” She waves her hand in the air for emphasis. “That’s when I yelled for you.” Outside, the wail of sirens grows closer as the emergency responders turn onto their street. Ethan looks toward the flames flickering through the shattered glass panel of their fireplace. Sloane follows his gaze. “He said he’d kill me for not helping him look innocent.” The sirens fill their quiet street, no doubt drawing the attention of all their neighbors, before coming to a stop in front of their house. Red lights flicker outside their


forward, threw open the door, and led in the stranger by the hand. At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in an old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed for a free and determined gait. It was the spirit of the man that could not walk. The expression of his countenance--while, notwithstanding it had the light of reason in it --seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and feebly to recover itself again. It was like a flame which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently than if it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward,--more intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished. For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood still, retaining Hepzibah's hand instinctively, as a child does that of the grown person who guides it. He saw Phoebe, however, and caught an illumination from her youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in the sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at curtsy. Imperfect as it was, however, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace, such as no practised art of external manners could have attained. It was too slight to seize upon at the instant; yet, as recollected afterwards, seemed to transfigure the whole man. "Dear Clifford," said Hepzibah, in the tone with which one soothes a wayward infant, "this is our cousin Phoebe,--little Phoebe Pyncheon,--Arthur's only child, you know. She has come from the country to stay with us awhile; for our old house has grown to be very lonely now." "Phoebe--Phoebe Pyncheon?--Phoebe?" repeated the guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined utterance. "Arthur's child! Ah, I forget! No matter. She is very welcome!" "Come, dear Clifford, take this chair," said Hepzibah, leading him to his place. "Pray, Phoebe, lower the curtain a very little more. Now let us begin breakfast." The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, and looked strangely around. He was evidently trying to grapple with the present scene, and bring it home to his mind with a more satisfactory distinctness. He desired to be certain, at least, that he was here, in the low-studded, cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some other spot, which had stereotyped itself into his senses. But the effort was too great


by in a small rowing boat, oars dipping in the river making a gentle lapping sound. Two swans slid by, their long necks turning like periscopes. The river was a surface of rippled glass, and trees hung over the banks, trailing low leaves in the water. Beyond, the sky was filled with curled lamb’s tail clouds. Minnie placed plates on a mat, and arranged dishes of food. ‘What are we eating?’ Lin asked. ‘It smells good.’ Minnie was delighted. ‘I’ve brought salmon sandwiches, courgette mini-quiches, prawn and avocado Vietnamese summer rolls, chicken katsu, beetroot and chickpea dip, guacamole, mint and basil griddled peach salad, bread…’ Florence stared. ‘I’ve no idea what any of those things are, apart from the bread.’ ‘It sounds heavenly. I’m delighted to have been asked to join your little group,’ Cecily said. ‘Did you make it all?’ ‘Some of it.’ Minnie winked. ‘Euripides said, “Friends show their love in times of trouble” – our lovely Miss Hamilton told us – “so we share lunch as friends.”’ ‘I wish I could cook though.’ Lin pulled a face. ‘I can’t even make toast.’ ‘I can cook sausages, but not much else,’ Florence said hesitantly. It occurred to her that she might have to prepare food for the baby. She had no idea what to feed a child. Minnie offered a smile. ‘Just try it and see what you think, Florence.’ She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘The first time I tried smoked salmon, I was not much younger than you are now. I was at a banquet at St Hilda’s, a fish out of water. I’d never had food like it – someone gave me crème brûlée and I asked if it was cold scrambled eggs and everyone laughed at me.’ Minnie pressed her lips together, remembering. ‘Per ardua ad astra.’ ‘What does that mean?’ Josie asked. Cecily smiled. ‘Through adversity to the stars… It must have been difficult, Minnie, going to Oxford straight from a small village like Middleton Ferris.’ ‘At first.’ Minnie nodded. ‘If only I had a coin for every time someone laughed at me for being a yokel. But I had many supportive friends too. They got me through.’ She flourished a salmon sandwich. ‘And here I am now. I’ve brought chilled champagne for a light Buck’s Fizz each and a bottle of Blood Orange and Bitter Lemon Shrub for the driver and those who don’t want alcohol.’ ‘That’s me, please,’ Florence said quietly. ‘I don’t drink…’ ‘Well, that’s refreshing,’ Lin grinned. ‘Most youngsters can’t get alcohol down their throats quick enough. I remember when Debbie was your age, Florence, she guzzled cider every weekend. She’d come home so tipsy…’ ‘Oh, we all drank it when we were teenagers in the rec, didn’t we?’ Josie remembered. ‘Dickie Edwards used to pilfer it from his dad’s pub.’ ‘Those were the days,’ Minnie said as she filled glasses. ‘But today, we’ll enjoy some of the finer things. We deserve it once in a while.’ ‘We do,’ Cecily agreed. ‘We’ll eat this delicious lunch, stretch out for a while


I didn't drop that. Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he swore he'd make the law force him. The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said HE was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for HIM. When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says: "Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go back. You mark them words -- don't forget I said them. It's a clean hand now; shake it -- don't be afeard." So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge's wife she kissed it. Then the


besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist. The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity: 'Please, sir, I want some more.' The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear. 'What!' said the master at length, in a faint voice. 'Please, sir,' replied Oliver, 'I want some more.' The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle. The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said, 'Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!' There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance. 'For MORE!' said Mr. Limbkins. 'Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?' 'He did, sir,' replied Bumble. 'That boy will be hung,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. 'I know that boy will be hung.' Nobody controverted


that. Hepzibah, though she had her valuable and redeeming traits, had grown to be a kind of lunatic by imprisoning herself so long in one place, with no other company than a single series of ideas, and but one affection, and one bitter sense of wrong. Clifford, the reader may perhaps imagine, was too inert to operate morally on his fellow-creatures, however intimate and exclusive their relations with him. But the sympathy or magnetism among human beings is more subtile and universal than we think; it exists, indeed, among different classes of organized life, and vibrates from one to another. A flower, for instance, as Phoebe herself observed, always began to droop sooner in Clifford's hand, or Hepzibah's, than in her own; and by the same law, converting her whole daily life into a flower fragrance for these two sickly spirits, the blooming girl must inevitably droop and fade much sooner than if worn on a younger and happier breast. Unless she had now and then indulged her brisk impulses, and breathed rural air in a suburban walk, or ocean breezes along the shore,--had occasionally obeyed the impulse of Nature, in New England girls, by attending a metaphysical or philosophical lecture, or viewing a seven-mile panorama, or listening to a concert,--had gone shopping about the city, ransacking entire depots of splendid merchandise, and bringing home a ribbon,--had employed, likewise, a little time to read the Bible in her chamber, and had stolen a little more to think of her mother and her native place--unless for such moral medicines as the above, we should soon have beheld our poor Phoebe grow thin and put on a bleached, unwholesome aspect, and assume strange, shy ways, prophetic of old-maidenhood and a cheerless future. Even as it was, a change grew visible; a change partly to be regretted, although whatever charm it infringed upon was repaired by another, perhaps more precious. She was not so constantly gay, but had her moods of thought, which Clifford, on the whole, liked better than her former phase of unmingled cheerfulness; because now she understood him better and more delicately, and sometimes even interpreted him to himself. Her eyes looked larger, and darker, and deeper; so deep, at some silent moments, that they seemed like Artesian wells, down, down, into the infinite. She was less girlish than when we first beheld her alighting from the omnibus; less girlish, but more a woman. The only youthful mind with which Phoebe had an opportunity of frequent intercourse was that of the daguerreotypist. Inevitably, by the pressure of the seclusion about them, they had been brought into habits of some familiarity. Had they met under different circumstances, neither of these young persons would have been likely to bestow much thought upon the other, unless, indeed, their extreme dissimilarity should have proved a principle of mutual attraction. Both, it is true, were characters proper to New England life, and possessing a common ground, therefore, in their more external developments; but as unlike, in their respective interiors, as if their native climes had been at


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

that I should see his chair empty. And so I kept veering about. At the corner of Broadway and Canal-street, I saw quite an excited group of people standing in earnest conversation. “I’ll take odds he doesn’t,” said a voice as I passed. “Doesn’t go?—done!” said I, “put up your money.” I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to produce my own, when I remembered that this was an election day. The words I had overheard bore no reference to Bartleby, but to the success or non-success of some candidate for the mayoralty. In my intent frame of mind, I had, as it were, imagined that all Broadway shared in my excitement, and were debating the same question with me. I passed on, very thankful that the uproar of the street screened my momentary absent-mindedness. As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my office door. I stood listening for a moment. All was still. He must be gone. I tried the knob. The door was locked. Yes, my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed must be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this: I was almost sorry for my brilliant success. I was fumbling under the door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked against a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in response a voice came to me from within—”Not yet; I am occupied.” It was Bartleby. I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth, was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by a summer lightning; at his own warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched him, when he fell. “Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly went down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of perplexity. Turn the man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me,—this too I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there any thing further that I could assume in the matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively assumed that Bartleby would depart, so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the legitimate carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry, and pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as if he were air. Such a proceeding would in a singular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand such an application of the


under the shadow, made up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied HAMLET all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name: HAMLET, I AM THY FATHER'S SPIRIT, bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever. Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to his own son's name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been prince Hamlet's twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises: you are the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your mother is the guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway? --But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began impatiently. Art thou there, truepenny? --Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean when we read the poetry of KING LEAR what is it to us how the poet lived? As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. We have KING LEAR: and it is immortal. Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed. FLOW OVER THEM WITH YOUR WAVES AND WITH YOUR WATERS, MANANAAN, MANANAAN MACLIR ... How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry? Marry, I wanted it. Take thou this noble. Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter. Agenbite of inwit. Do you intend to pay it back? O, yes. When? Now? Well ... No. When, then? I paid my way. I paid my way. Steady on. He's from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe it. Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound. Buzz. Buzz. But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms. I that sinned and prayed and fasted. A child Conmee saved from pandies. I, I and I. I. A.E.I.O.U. --Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John Eglinton's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born. --She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his children and she laid pennies on his


a fast growing—and increasingly violent—White Center gang. A call light dings outside one of the treatment rooms. Logan logs off the computer. “He was brought back in septic shock—with a bunch of fresh track marks on his arms.” He heads in the direction of the blinking call light. “Hey, Logan?” He turns. “Did Ethan talk to you yesterday?” Logan’s brows knit together. “Your husband?” Sloane nods. “No. Why?” Sloane shrugs. “Oh, it’s nothing. I’ll go let Evelyn know about that potassium level.” Sloane moves down the hallway as Logan answers the call light. If it wasn’t Logan that Ethan interviewed yesterday, who was it? Evelyn would’ve told her if it had been her. Plus, she wasn’t a part of Chelsea’s resuscitation. When she gets to treatment room ten, it’s empty aside from a nurse clearing supplies off a procedure cart. Sloane stops inside the doorway. “I’m looking for Dr. Chang.” The nurse tosses the used supplies into the trash before turning her way. “Her patient just got taken to the ICU. I think she went to the bathroom.” She pulls off her gloves and hurries out of the room. Sloane spots a Carhart coat draped over a chair in the corner. It was probably removed by the medics or ER team. She lifts it off the chair to take it back to the nurse’s station when something in the inner pocket clunks against the chair’s metal armrest. She reaches inside the coat and feels the smooth, hard barrel of a pistol. “I think the patient’s coat got left in here.” Sloane jumps from the nurse’s voice behind her. She grips the gun’s handle and slides it out of the coat’s pocket and into the front pocket of her scrubs. She turns around, forcing a smile as she holds the coat out toward the nurse. “This must be it.” “Thanks.” The nurse hurriedly reaches for the garment before disappearing down the hall. Sloane presses a hand gently against the weapon in her scrub top when she steps out into the hall, afraid to let it bounce around for fear it might go off. Not to mention that someone might recognize the outline of a pistol in her pocket. Evelyn steps around the corner of the corridor at the same time as Sloane. “Hey.” “Oh!” Sloane puts her other hand to her chest. Evelyn laughs. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I heard you were looking for me.” Calm down. Sloane nods while taking a slow breath. “What’d you need?” “Um…” All Sloane can think about is the pistol in her pocket. From the weight of it, she guesses it’s loaded. Evelyn looks at her expectantly, the smile fading from her face the longer it takes Sloane to respond. “Oh. I had Logan start a potassium infusion for your patient in room four, Grant Hopkins, for a potassium of two point two. I also had him hold off on the insulin until after he gets another potassium level. Just wanted to let you know.” “Okay, thanks.” Evelyn crosses her arms, glancing behind her before


The Invisible Man- A Grotesque Romance.txt

himself by going up the yard and trying to peep under the window-blinds. He could see nothing, but gave reason for supposing that he did, and others of the Iping youth presently joined him. It was the finest of all possible Whit-Mondays, and down the village street stood a row of nearly a dozen booths and a shooting gallery, and on the grass by the forge were three yellow and chocolate waggons and some picturesque strangers of both sexes putting up a cocoanut shy. The gentlemen wore blue jerseys, the ladies white aprons and quite fashionable hats with heavy plumes. Wodger of the Purple Fawn and Mr. Jaggers the cobbler, who also sold second-hand ordinary bicycles, were stretching a string of union-jacks and royal ensigns (which had originally celebrated the Jubilee) across the road... And inside, in the artificial darkness of the parlour, into which only one thin jet of sunlight penetrated, the stranger, hungry we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, pored through his dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys, audible if invisible, outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent tang of chlorine tainted the air. So much we know from what was heard at the time and from what was subsequently seen in the room. About noon he suddenly opened his parlour door and stood glaring fixedly at the three or four people in the bar. "Mrs. Hall," he said. Somebody went sheepishly and called for Mrs. Hall. Mrs. Hall appeared after an interval, a little short of breath, but all the fiercer for that. Hall was still out. She had deliberated over the scene, and she came holding a little tray with an unsettled bill upon it. "Is it your bill you're wanting, sir?" she said. "Why wasn't my breakfast laid? Why haven't you prepared my meals and answered my bell? Do you think I live without eating?" "Why isn't my bill paid?" said Mrs. Hall. "That's what I want to know." "I told you three days ago I was awaiting a remittance--" "I told you two days ago I wasn't going to await no remittances. You can't grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill's been waiting these five days, can you?" The stranger swore briefly but vividly. "Nar, nar!" from the bar. "And I'd thank you kindly, sir, if you'd keep your swearing to yourself, sir," said Mrs. Hall. The stranger stood looking more like an angry diving-helmet than ever. It was universally felt in the bar that Mrs. Hall had the better of him. His next words showed as much. "Look here, my good woman--" he began. "Don't good woman me," said Mrs. Hall. "I've told you my remittance hasn't come--" "Remittance indeed!" said Mrs. Hall. "Still, I daresay in my pocket--" "You told me two days ago that you hadn't anything but a sovereign's worth of silver upon you--" "Well, I've found some


have been Robbie, because look at the carefree way he’d jumped into the pool the other day. Alder and Geoff were staring at the photo again. Somewhere in the same building, Robbie and his family slept. Somewhere out there, so did you. 23 There was once a man they caught because he claimed he hadn’t left the state—but the dead bugs on the windshield of his rental car could only have come from outside California. There was a man they caught because he’d ordered the knife on Amazon. There was a man they caught because his name was on the Starbucks cup in her trash. There was a man who was told that his wife’s body had been found in the woods. He arrived on the scene and instead of running toward the police tape, he ran to the exact spot where he’d left her body. There was a guy whose claim of earlier consensual sex fell apart because his semen was in her body, but not in her underwear or pants. “Because dead women,” the prosecutor explained, “don’t stand up.” There was a woman who managed to cut her captor’s driver’s license into twenty little pieces and swallow them so when they found her body his ID would be in her stomach. And they arrested him. They brought him in for questioning. But they never pressed charges against him. 24 Back in my own room, I lay in bed trying to think. If Robbie killed her, if Robbie lost his temper and became violent, it was likely over you. What else would make him that angry? Well: Some people have rage right below the surface, and an overcooked potato is enough to incite domestic homicide. As far as I knew, that wasn’t Robbie. She’d never gone to class with bruises on her face. She was coming from your show. Had he seen something between the two of you? I remembered the seed of my own initial unease: the way Thalia turned her head offstage, the way she mouthed What? as if someone were back there, waiting for her, upset with her. You were in the orchestra pit, conducting. Omar’s presence in the theater would have been noted. Whereas Robbie Serenho could slip backstage, could walk straight through the clusters of waiting actors with no more than a whispered “Robbie, you’re not supposed to be here!” Their fight could have started when she came offstage and told him to leave. Or maybe he was back there because the fight had begun hours earlier. Maybe he was coasting on hours of rage. Maybe he knew exactly what he was planning. I slept, but my dreams only rehashed things. The photos on Geoff’s bed, the math problem of the bike in the woods. A train leaves Kansas City at 9:00 p.m., headed for the gym. How angry is the driver? In the morning, I texted Fran: I have a quest for Jacob and Max. Could they time themselves, I asked, riding bikes from the gym to the old mattress spot? Could they avoid any


spent four months getting to know my now-girlfriend before I asked her out on a date. One hour. * * * The Orange Tree Publishing interview is in their Farringdon offices. There are books everywhere and the nonfiction department’s layout is open-plan, spacious but small enough so you can stand, call out a name, and have that person hear you loud and clear. Again, not a pair of jeans in sight, but I spot stripy tops and casual trousers. I’m the only Black person in the room when I walk in but I don’t know for sure that there are no other Black staff members. Someone could be off sick or on annual leave. Should I ask? No, of course you can’t ask. How would that sound? Do you have any questions for me, Maddie? Yes, would I be the only Black person you’ve hired? And if so, why is that? No, I need this job and, to be honest, it looks likely I’ll get it. They need me. They need me here to appear at least semi-decent to the outside world. It’s easier to talk to others about how important diversity and inclusion is if you can wave a hand vaguely around the office and have me sat in the middle of it. No, don’t think like that—you’ll get the job because you’re qualified. * * * Penny Reaser is in her midforties, tanned, with brown eyes enhanced by blue eye shadow. Her blond hair is cropped short and appears to be in no particular style. She offers me a seat, and I think of Katherine’s office at CGT, its clutter-free space and neat stacks of paper. Penny’s bookcases are heaving and each smooth surface is covered in colorful books. Her desk is piled high with book catalogs, stationery bits, and loose sheets of paper despite there being a tall filing cabinet in the corner. I think the cabinet is probably full. Katherine had a shredder under her desk. I might suggest Penny get a shredder. We talk about OTP’s list (a variety of nonfiction, but my main focus will be on food and drink) and my experience, before going on to my role here. “The role will start off admin-heavy with my diary, minute-taking, meeting prep, online orders—very much things you’ll have already done and are proficient at,” Penny says. When she reaches for a sip of her tea, I notice her plain wedding band and that her nails are painted Barbie pink by someone who has difficulty coloring within lines. I wonder if she has any children. “You’ll be trained in our database MDX where all our data is stored,” she continues, “and there’s a lot you’ll learn on the job. We pair all our assistants with a senior editor so you gain invaluable insight into what it means to be an editor from the very beginning.” This sounds promising. Not so much the admin portion, especially since I know “meeting prep” is industry talk for making tea and coffee, but if I can get through that period, I’ll


of this, maybe he would modify his assertion. What he called cowardice would have saved him all this trouble and kept this bed open for one of the men A & E might have to turn away tonight. Her phone vibrated against her thigh as she moved to the next bed. Rectopexy—stalled as he attempted to turn over, he grimaced as the catheter reminded his body of what was possible and all that would not be for a while. She took the phone out of her ward coat’s pocket and flipped it open. Kúnlé. She flipped the phone shut and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans, where it began to vibrate again as she pulled out the next case file. Pancreatectomy—knocked out since noon, he might wake up any moment now and spend the rest of the night wide-eyed. But at least—thanks to the small mercies of morphine—he would not be in pain. His was the first pancreatectomy Wúràọlá had scrubbed in for since she started the surgical rotation. On the night before the surgery, she’d fallen asleep shortly before dawn with her head nestled between the pages of Clinical Pancreatology for Practising Gastroenterologists and Surgeons. In the end, she wasn’t even allowed to touch the surgical tray during the procedure. There had been no electricity in the hospital for over a month, but that in itself was no longer unusual enough to be remarkable. The real problem was a fuel crisis that had lasted for a week because tanker drivers, rig workers, someone or the other was on strike. Wúràọlá was often too tired to go beyond the headlines, but what she could surmise was that some union was on strike, there was a fuel crisis as a result and the hospital’s powerhouse was running out of diesel for the generator. A memo announcing yet another power-sharing formula was slid into pigeonholes and stuck with colourful thumbtacks to noticeboards after the strike began. If the intensive care unit and Hurford Ward were to be powered nonstop, other wards and theatres would be powered only when there was a procedure that necessitated the use of electricity. And so, during the surgery, consultants did everything without teaching as they went along. They did not even ask any of the resident doctors to assist. It seemed as though the two surgeons had concluded that losing an extra second to a resident’s slower incision or a house officer’s inexperienced suturing could rob a neonate of the electricity needed to power its ventilator if the fuel scarcity persisted. When Wúràọlá was assigned to lead nurses as they wheeled the patient through the hospital’s darkened corridors after the surgery, she’d burst into giggles as she stepped out of the theatre. Six years of training, and the only skill that had been required of her in a twelve-hour-long surgery was her ability to hold up her phone so its torchlight would guide nurses? The surgery had gone well. But the medical team already knew that the procedure would not save his life. Extend it? Yes,


a whirlwind romance.” He put out his hand for August to shake. Her husband didn’t seem thrilled about letting her go long enough to conduct the greeting. “Call me William, please. Good to meet you. Sorry you couldn’t make dinner.” August nodded. “Nice to meet you, too.” Savage studied her husband. “Are you some kind of athlete or something?” he asked, rolling a shoulder. “I’m a SEAL. Been retired just over three years.” “You’re shitting me! A Navy SEAL.” The man dropped his drink onto the bar, with no awareness that it splashed onto the jacket of the closest patron. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a SEAL. Talked about it until I was blue in the face. My father even set up obstacle courses in the backyard and called it toddler training. I’d love to hear some battle stories.” Her husband looked down at her. “I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of them tonight from Natalie already, though, right? I don’t know a lot about the financial world, but a woman on Wall Street would have to fight harder than anyone, I imagine.” Savage laughed. “Harder than a SEAL? I’m not sure about that.” August’s eyes seemed to darken a shade. “It’s a different kind of fighting. And she has fought her way back here with almost no support. No one encouraging her to do it. God only knows where her inner strength comes from, but I’ll tell you something, it’s more than I’ve got. It’s enough to keep putting herself out there with no reward and I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t take someone with that much bravery seriously.” It took everything inside of Natalie not to burst into tears. He was right. She’d been kicking ass and clawing her way back and that effort had gone unacknowledged. By anyone. And she wasn’t the only woman who went about her daily grind only for people to expect more, so she liked to think all of womankind celebrated with her in that moment. When her husband finally got it. When he finally saw her. The investor had gone from jocular to thoughtful during August’s speech. He turned his attention to her now. “If I trust you with my money, what’s your first play?” Natalie took a deep breath and let it rip. “Obviously we’re going with a classic long/short equity strategy. We make the smart investments that put us ahead and give us room to play and then we short technologies, pharma, oil based on bold predictions and market trends. And I’m not just talking about the United States. We’re going to monitor markets and how consumers respond in every geographical location on the face of the earth, taking everything down to the fucking weather patterns into account. If your money isn’t tripled in the first quarter, I’ll give you back every cent of your initial investment.” A muscle hopped in Savage’s cheek. August’s pride was evident in every line of his body, but she couldn’t risk looking at him or she’d lose her cool. “I’ll move some


of hope, possible salvation. Pitiful humans. Have you learned nothing from your predecessors? How simple it was for us then … “Commander, the admiral’s red ships are in position along the fringe of the asteroid field.” Soon … your carcasses will fill our holds, so many of you … primed to fill our bellies. Lu-puk’s beady eyes widened, while his inner eyelids narrowed. “What are you waiting for?” He slithered his ample body forward, now just inches behind the operators. “I want that nanite cloud repositioned. Now!” Tiny claws moved in unison, all five operators activating a similar series of controls. Together, they adjusted and coaxed micro-gravitational fields, the only means of influencing and repositioning the coalesced nanites. Lu-puk watched with anticipation the microscopic mechanical marvels, engineered in the darkest recesses of their Liquilid laboratories—each crafted with sleek metallic exoskeletons and agile appendages. Small, yes, but these minuscule bots were designed to sow merciless chaos. Lu-puk had no doubt—he did not have the luxury of doubt—that soon, very soon, both human ships would come under full Liquilid control. Chapter 48 Liquilid Empire Star System USS Adams Captain Galvin Quintos “Lieutenant James, you have the conn,” I said, getting to my feet and stretching my back. “I have the conn,” she replied, looking back at me with a quizzical expression, “Where you off to, Cap?” “Aft Cargo Airlock #22. I need to move. This sitting around waiting is making me crazy.” “Mmm, isn’t that where HealthBay’s being transferred over from?” I didn’t comment on that. “Just hail me if anything changes.” “Copy that.” Whale’s Alley was a flurry of activity, with stern-faced crew members hurrying this way and that. With dozens of stacked-high hovercarts, some being pushed, others pulled, it was reminiscent of a busy twentieth-century train station. My orders to only bring what could be carried in one’s two hands evidently had been totally ignored. The overall anxiety level here within Adams’ most expansive corridor was palpable. Life on board a US Space-Navy dreadnought was rarely easygoing, especially in wartime. But this was the third, or was it the fourth, mass exodus from one ship to another in so many months. I’d pushed this crew to their limits, and it was showing on their faces, their hunched shoulders. As I moved through the expansive corridor toward the bank of GravLifts, I stopped. To my right was the quansporter compartment. I looked in, stood there within the threshold. Coogong had spent countless hours in here, tinkering, improving on the efficiency of the original Sir Louis de Broglie contraption, one now residing somewhere within the hull of Captain Pristy’s Hercules. I wondered where my once-first officer was at this moment. Now a captain in her own right, undoubtedly, she was still there within the Lost Tombstone Star System on board her ship, orbiting Genoma, or perhaps within the high walls of Stratham Hold. Wherever she was, I sure could use her frank counsel and unwavering support right now. My vibrating Jadoo ring jolted me back to the present, “Go for Captain,” I said, without


castle, in a way even Robb would never know. It taught him Winterfell's secrets too. The builders had not even leveled the earth; there were hills and valleys behind the walls of Winterfell. There was a covered bridge that went from the fourth floor of the bell tower across to the second floor of the rookery. Bran knew about that. And he knew you could get inside the inner wall by the south gate, climb three floors and run all the way around Winterfell through a narrow tunnel in the stone, and then come out on ground level at the north gate, with a hundred feet of wall looming over you. Even Maester Luwin didn't know that, Bran was convinced. His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall and kill himself. He told her that he wouldn't, but she never believed him. Once she made him promise that he would stay on the ground. He had managed to keep that promise for almost a fortnight, miserable every day, until one night he had gone out the window of his bedroom when his brothers were fast asleep. He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of guilt. Lord Eddard ordered him to the godswood to cleanse himself. Guards were posted to see that Bran remained there alone all night to reflect on his disobedience. The next morning Bran was nowhere to be seen. They finally found him fast asleep in the upper branches of the tallest sentinel in the grove. As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh. "You're not my son," he told Bran when they fetched him down, "you're a squirrel. So be it. If you must climb, then climb, but try not to let your mother see you." Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really footed her. Since his father would not forbid it, she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were crows' nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out his eyes. Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him in A GAME OF THRONES 71 Bran's clothes and flung him off the wall into the yard below, to demonstrate what would happen to Bran if he fell. That had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and said, "I'm not made of clay. And anyhow, I never fall." Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw him on the roofs, and try to haul him down. That was the best time of all. It was like playing


a snake farm, or a Mexican Christmas tree factory, or whatever he had a gut feeling was going to be his ticket to easy street that week. Louise told her dad the plan: give it all to her, make her the executor; she’d sell the house and put Mark’s half in a trust. Mark would be upset at first, but once the monthly checks started arriving, he’d calm down. And it would give her a nice tax break. Her dad approved of tax breaks. How much is it worth? A lot. Everyone in Mount Pleasant knew that anything with four walls and a roof that didn’t leak could get half a million dollars, easy. Half a million dollars. Louise didn’t want to be thinking about money so soon after her parents had died, but without even trying she started thinking about Poppy’s college education, a bigger house with an actual yard where they could get a dog and she could even have another baby, a brother or a sister for Poppy. No. She’d seen what had happened between her and Mark, and she’d promised not to do that to Poppy. She saw the damage done to her mom by her brother and he’d been dead for over sixty-five years. Her dad’s brothers hated her mom and she knew the rift that had caused left her dad feeling eternally incomplete. It was too late for her and Mark to be brother and sister anymore, but she didn’t have to repeat the same mistake with Poppy. One child was more than enough. But this house where they’d grown up could fund a better future for Poppy. It could— The TV was on again. Louise hit the brakes and her Kia lurched to a stop in the middle of the street. Through the big bay window in the living room, behind the drawn curtains, a blue light pulsed and flickered. Someone was inside. Louise cut her headlights and pulled up. She got out and quietly closed her car door, eyes on the curtains and the blue light dancing behind them. She crept onto the front porch and tried the door, but Mark had locked it again. She snuck around back and tried the rear garage door, but he’d locked that, too. She looked through the sliding glass doors that opened into the dining room and could see the TV light in the hall, shifting on the carpet, but she couldn’t see who was inside. She had unplugged the TV. Someone had come into their house, probably a neighbor with a spare key, and plugged it back in and settled into her dad’s chair to watch. It made her furious. She wanted them out right now. She examined the lock on the garage door but it wasn’t one she could pick, and a strip of wood kept her from jimmying the latch with her library card. She’d have to do this the hard way. She found the chunk of the Berlin Wall her dad had brought back from their trip to Germany and picked it up


urge to flip the table over and take Carr’s neck in his grip at the same time. He resists them both. Instead, he locks eyes with The One’s founder. “Can you explain to us what happened yesterday while you and your wife were diving? How she died?” Jonah asks. Before leaving the homicide unit, McKinnon replayed Carr’s 911 call to the emergency operator for Ethan and Jonah. Carr had sounded every bit the distraught husband trying to save his dying wife. “We used to freedive together a lot when we lived in California. It’s something we both loved. So, we thought it might be a good way to try and rekindle things between us. Anyway, we went into the water together. The visibility wasn’t great. We came upon some short pilings and a school of fish. I spotted a huge ling cod and swam after it. I thought Chelsea was coming with me. But when I looked around for her, she was gone. I swam back in the direction I’d come from but couldn’t find her. When I surfaced, she was nowhere in sight. Then I spotted some bubbles on the surface, about twenty feet away. I dove down and swam through a thick patch of bull kelp, when I finally found her.” His voice breaks. He looks down at his hands and clears his throat. “She was unconscious with a long piece of kelp wrapped several times around her leg, and fin. The kelp was wound tight. It took me some time to cut her free.” He shakes his head. “Too long.” His story matches what he told the emergency dispatcher. Ethan unfolds the map of Jack Block Park he printed off before leaving the homicide unit. He slides it toward Carr. “Could you show us where Chelsea was when you found her?” Carr’s attorney places his unnaturally tan hand on his client’s shoulder. “It’s okay if you don’t remember.” Carr pulls the map in front of him. “I remember.” “This is only a best guess from my client’s recollection of a traumatic event.” “Understood.” Ethan watches Carr point to a spot on the water near a floating wharf. “It was around here. A couple hundred yards from shore. There’s a big shelf there that drops to about a hundred feet or so.” Ethan withdraws a pen from his pocket and marks the map after Carr slides it back toward him. “Again, he’s guessing.” Ethan ignores the attorney’s remark. “Did she not have a knife of her own?” “She did.” Carr keeps his eyes on his hands. “But I noticed it wasn’t in her holster at the hospital. She must’ve dropped it trying to free herself.” Ethan casts a sideways glance at his partner. They would need to send divers down from the Harbor Unit to see if they could recover it. Jonah leans forward in his chair. “How much time passed, do you think, between when you last saw her and found her unconscious?” He sighs. When he looks up at the detectives there are tears in his eyes. “I


that way, too. “It’s been hard,” I say with a shrug, when asked how I’m doing, “but I’m hanging in there.” One day, after we run into some friends in the neighborhood, my older child calls me out on my usual choice of words. “How come you always tell people that you’re ‘hanging in there’?” she asks. Well, I think, a bit defensively, because I am. Am I not still doing what needs to be done: getting up every morning and going to work, taking care of my family, saying yes to anything anyone asks me to do? I haven’t dropped a single ball at work. My publishing team has thanked me for my promptness in replying to their emails, for being so great to work with. I am an expert at grieving under capitalism. Watch and learn. All the while, I keep daydreaming about walking into traffic. From the moment the thought pushes its way into my grief-muddled brain, I know that I could never act on it. It’s not that I want to hurt myself—it’s that I cannot seem to work up any remorse when I think about no longer being alive. Nor does the thought frighten me, as it always did before. What if you didn’t have to feel this way anymore? my mind proposes, in moments that are deceptively calm, moments when I am not sobbing in the shower or screaming in my car because I cannot scream at home. What if the pain could just end? As a child, I knew that I was not permitted to indulge in the hyperbolic or sarcastic statements other kids made about wanting to die, because my father would erupt. Toward the end of sixth grade, my teacher had everyone in my class write a fake will; my most charitable reading is that the exercise might have been intended to help us identify the things that were most important to us as we moved from elementary into middle school, symbolically leaving our childhoods behind. Most of my classmates made light of the task—I hereby bequeath my Game Boy to my little brother, because he always steals it anyway—but I remember little of what I wrote in my will, only my father’s fury over the assignment. “You’re twelve years old!” he yelled. He threatened to call my teacher. And then all the fight went out of him, his voice numb as he told me about being twenty-one years old and witnessing the death of his favorite cousin. The two of them had shared an apartment in a Cleveland high-rise, and one night my father came home to find him about to jump from their window. He pleaded with him, tried to stop him, but his cousin leaped before he could reach him. Dad had always blamed himself. It takes me months, after his death, to realize that I am not fine, or hanging in there. I go to see my primary care doctor for a long-overdue physical and break down in the exam room, sobbing as she hands me one flimsy tissue


it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his prayer had not been answered? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth. Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl's fault, not his. He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little child. He remembered with what callousness he had watched her. Why had he been made like that? Why had such a soul been given to him? But he had suffered also. During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. His life was well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to him now. But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again? No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. The horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that [43] makes men mad. The picture had not changed. It was folly to think so. Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. Its gold would wither into gray. Its red and white roses would die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation. He