to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on just MY lines, and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and that I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited I thought of more things than one. But there's only one I take space to mention. I wondered why SHE should be scared. V Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she loomed again into view. "What in the name of goodness is the matter--?" She was now flushed and out of breath. I said nothing till she came quite near. "With me?" I must have made a wonderful face. "Do I show it?" "You're as white as a sheet. You look awful." I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose's had dropped, without a rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind of support in the shy heave of her surprise. "You came for me for church, of course, but I can't go." "Has anything happened?" "Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?" "Through this window? Dreadful!" "Well," I said, "I've been frightened." Mrs. Grose's eyes expressed plainly that SHE had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well her place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience. Oh, it was quite settled that she MUST share! "Just what you saw from the dining room a minute ago was the effect of that. What _I_ saw--just before--was much worse." Her hand tightened. "What was it?" "An extraordinary man. Looking in." "What extraordinary man?" "I haven't the least idea." Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. "Then where is he gone?" "I know still less." "Have you seen him before?" "Yes--once. On the old tower." She could only look at me harder. "Do you mean he's a stranger?" "Oh, very much!" "Yet you didn't tell me?" "No--for reasons. But now that you've guessed--" Mrs. Grose's round eyes encountered this charge. "Ah, I haven't guessed!" she said


cancer, about five years back, and for a while Lacarte’s looked like going with him. The nephew who took it on fitted it out nice in pursuit of one of those property booms that’s always just about to happen in Tappeny Bridge, and when it didn’t come he took the operating account and moved on, leaving nothing but some stained nubuck seat covers and an unpaid staff. Then one of those things happened that they write about later in local history books. A sullen long-hair named Marto Costanza who worked as a washer-up and daytime cook was in the kitchen when a bunch of construction guys came by for eggs. One of these guys, it turns out, was Marto’s brother Matias. Marto made them eggs and told his tale of woe, whereupon a conversation between the brothers took place about fucking landlords and fucking bosses generally. Marto and Matias’s friends got pissed and righteous that the Lacarte was going to close, like that was the line. This crappy, gentrified, failed little day drinking spot was the Rubicon that capitalism was no way going to cross. They just flat out occupied the place. First it was a protest, then an illegal squat for a hundred days, and then a bunch of families got together and bought the nephew out. Marto Costanza got his hair cut and put a red bandanna around each arm, and now he runs the Lacarte Free House and Working People’s Hostel. The smoke comes out the door and down the road, and on Saturday nights they sing the “Internationale” at closing time. More dirty communist sex is had in the upstairs rooms of the Lacarte than anywhere else within three thousand miles, and that includes the university. I know the downstairs scene a little. I don’t even hate it. I’m an investigator. You can’t do the job without occasionally thinking the whole world is a crime scene. Plus there was one time I had a divorce case—I do have to make money between when some Titan steps in burning shit—and the guy told me after I followed him around half the city that, yeah, he’d been to bed with a woman who lived there on and off, but only that one time, because as they were doing the deed he realised she had a tattoo of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and it was winking at him every time she moved. But if you’re looking for the Marx Brothers on the shores of Othrys, you could do worse than try the place where Marto and Matias’s picture hangs over the bar, and the beer runs red. I stand across the street for a minute. There’s a tricker kid practicing flips under a streetlight, her boyfriend filming. Three steps, kick off the wall, land solid. Go again. Sometimes she does a twist instead, rolling along the chicken wire and coming down like a dancer. I realise I’m in their shot. I’ve always watched them, like birds flying. Now I wonder how many of them scout for Doublewide, how much he sees. How


"You are very pressing, Basil, but I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans.--Good-by, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when you are coming. I should be sorry to miss you." "Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry goes I shall go too. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay. I insist upon it." "Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward, gazing intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk when I am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay." "But what about my man at the Orleans?" Hallward laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about that. Sit down again, Harry.--And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the exception of myself." Dorian stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Hallward. They made a delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?" "There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral,--immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly,--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's [14] self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion,--these are the two things that govern us. And yet--" "Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy," said Hallward, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before. "And yet," continued Lord


don’t count on it. Or sometimes, just sometimes, Stefan will walk out in the street and pick someone who catches his eye. Three times ever, that I know of. One chance in eight billion during the course of a human lifespan. And because people are superstitious in the face of what they fear—and there’s plenty to fear for all of us, even Titans, because once you’ve seen the heavenly city you have always to fear being kicked out of it—there are myths and ghost stories here in the city. The same ones from Chersenesos to Tappeny Bridge; the same ones in penthouses and poorhouses; the same ghosts seen over different shoulders in different mirrors. There’s the mad Titan called Mr. Streetlight, grown impossibly tall and thin and trailing silken threads like a spider as he walks through the suburbs, lifting people up and away by the neck and dropping them strangled by the side of the road. There’s the Drowners, also called the Fates, the three weird sisters of Lake Othrys, so big and old they can only stay alive underwater, who snack on passing swimmers and pleasure boats that wake them in the reeds. Over on the other shore, there’s the Devil Dogs, escaped test subjects from the T1 lab at marker 9, hounds like bears supposedly living in the desert a hundred miles to the north. There are human monsters, too: half awful and half admired, like Flens, whose husband was supposedly killed by a Titan, and who picks them off one by one in their pleasure palaces and leaves them jointed for Stefan Tonfamecasca to find. Last month I heard someone say that Titans can only get high on baseline human adrenaline. A month before that, it was that they can only have sex if they inject freshly harvested hormones. And then there’s Doublewide, the Titan victim of some experimental offshoot that didn’t work, who grew sideways but not up and escaped euthanasia to live in the sewers until he became the king of beggars, and then the king of thieves. The Humpty Dumpty of crime, more recently known to me as Mr. Cocktail. All the new ghosts of the city, the things I laugh about. At least one is true. My dreams, in the hospital, are full of them. “Welcome to St. Helen’s,” the nurse says, his hands cold on my forehead as I come back. “Again.” “Again?” “We had this conversation earlier. You remember?” “No.” “Then welcome to St. Helen’s. That’s a nice clean gunshot wound you have there. I’m impressed.” “Thank you.” “Somehow I don’t think you can take credit.” “I piss off very clean gunmen.” He chuckles. “Okay, tough guy, you’re with us. Well done. Now shut up, get some sleep, and when you wake up I’ll bring you some food.” “Hospital food.” “Yeah, sorry about that. You want Le Chat Noir, you need to duck faster.” “All the nurses in the city, I get the funny one.” He smiles, and there’s not the slightest hint of compromise in it. Just kindness. “Go to sleep,


“gabbers,” and had no close friends of his own. Despite his progressive social views, his reflexes were sexist. He always chose male doctors, hurried to open doors for women with a gallantry that suggested they couldn’t push a handle, and constantly used the word “lovely” when describing his assistant. What had once seemed quaint and fixable now seemed oppressive. Maud started to spend Friday nights out with her friends and away from him, joining a chorus that met over pints at the local pub to complain about men and marriage. No one was having good sex. Everyone was sick of putting down the toilet seat. But Maud’s complaints ran deeper. She no longer wanted to be with Peter. And eventually he noticed. He stopped kissing her good night. He repeatedly asked her if she was listening to anything he said. They bickered over mundanities like who had left the cap off the saltcellar. “Maybe we should go to counseling,” Maud said half-heartedly after a failed attempt at sex, during which her vagina stayed dry and Peter lost his erection. “What’s the point of counseling if we no longer know how to talk?” Peter said. “Isn’t that the point of counseling?” But she didn’t insist. Together, they gave up. And, as she both knew and didn’t know, Peter started cheating. Then, in the spring of 2010, the head of his division retired, and Peter—the clear successor—was passed up by a junior colleague. He was devastated. “Kicked in the head,” he said when he called Maud from London to tell her. He was his usual quiet on his weekends home, but crankier, even with Louise and Ella. He drank too much at night, which made him nicer but in a messy, slurring way that reminded Maud of her father. As the orchard blossomed and the tulips emerged, he turned his resentment on Maud. If he hadn’t received the promotion, he said, it was the fault of the commute and the complications of a split existence. He said that Maud should never have taken the Monk’s House job and put him in this position. “You’re rewriting history,” she said. “You agreed to this.” “Stop talking about bloody history.” “Stop blaming me for your failure.” The two of them were in the potting shed, where they now went to fight to be out of earshot of the girls. Maud had thrown the word “failure” at Peter like a rock, and she saw the impact on his face. They didn’t speak for the rest of the weekend. The following Thursday evening, after she picked him up from the train station, he asked her to pull over. She’d never seen him cry, not even when his father died. It was disconcerting to watch his face crumble. “I’m sorry I’ve been an ass,” he said. “I feel lost. There’s one thing I’m good at, and I don’t even know if I am anymore.” He couldn’t take it, he said. He couldn’t go back to that office. He was humiliated. He had to quit. “And I need you to believe


for when I’m gone. But can I do that on my own? Without Jesse’s help? I’ve been controlled and manipulated for so long that the thought of hatching a complex plan, of carrying it out by myself, is daunting, even terrifying. But I must try. And if I fail? I won’t live like this any longer. If I can’t set myself free, then I will end my life. I will draw a bath, take a handful of sleeping pills, pour a glass of vodka over ice. I’ll climb into the water and let the chemicals do their work. And then I will slip under and drown. Peacefully. Gone. On my own terms. * * * Finally, it is time. Jesse had instructed me to park the vehicle at the beach, close to my house. It would have played into the stalker narrative—the woman in the park who was obsessed with me. But that’s no longer relevant. Ahead, I see the Trader Joe’s where I told Lee I would leave her car. Flicking on the indicator, I pull into the busy lot. I slide the car into a lonely spot away from the doors and climb out. Moving around to the back of the vehicle, I open the trunk. It is stuffed with all of Lee’s worldly belongings. Carefully, I rummage through an overstuffed backpack until I find it. The netsuke is wrapped in a black T-shirt, but I remove it, stroke the snake’s smooth head before stuffing it into my pocket. It is the last piece of the evidence against Lee. I have protected her as much as I can. Setting her keys on the back tire, I begin the long walk home. My route takes me down side streets, through residential neighborhoods, along the gravel verge of a sparsely traveled highway. It will take me over an hour to get to my house this way, but I need the time to concoct a story. To explain why I am walking home. A lost key fob is the most believable. I’ll grab the spare, collect my car in the parking lot where Lee will leave it. Benjamin will punish me for my carelessness, but I don’t care. Soon, he won’t be able to hurt me anymore. As I trudge the last few yards to my home, I feel a prickle of anxiety. Nate is not at his post; the first sign that something is off. His black SUV is there, but it is empty. Did he catch Jesse coming in through the back door? Did he subdue him and call the police? My lover has a record, I’m sure of it. He could be charged with trespassing. Breaking and entering. Maybe even stalking. If caught, he’ll go down for this. Would he try to take me with him? My Mercedes is there, parked next to the garage. That means Lee was here, that she’d done as I asked. But she should have left by now in my car. My shoulders tense with worry. Was she confronted? By whom? She couldn’t have encountered


exactly how helpful you’d have to be for a non-insane woman to divorce you over it.” “There were a few other reasons,” Joe said. “Are you pathologically helpful? Did you give someone your car? Or, like, a vital organ?” “Not yet,” Joe said. “My last boyfriend was the opposite of helpful,” I said. “Your way is better.” “That’s comforting.” “I’m probably a good friend for you,” I said. “Because I never need help.” “That’s a relief,” Joe said, continuing to stroke my back in a hypnotizing rhythm and kindly allowing me to ignore the irony. I admit: It was relaxing. After a while, he said, “My friend who had a completely different thing from you used to breathe while I did this, and it helped her a lot.” “I don’t need to breathe, thank you,” I said. “Suit yourself,” Joe said. But then he added, “Deep breaths are super healthy for you, though—even if you’re totally fine. I might take a few myself. Just to improve my already stellar health.” And with that, Joe sucked in a big, loud breath, held it for about three seconds, and then blew it back out. “So refreshing,” he said then. “My grandma does this every day, and she just turned a hundred.” He kept breathing like that, and what can I say? Peer pressure. I joined him. We did about ten rounds, and then, I’m not going to lie: I did feel better. Less dizzy. Less nauseated. Less sweaty. “My friend’s totally different thing used to pass after about twenty minutes,” Joe said then. “I don’t think my thing is going to pass until this party ends,” I said. “Ah,” Joe said. Then, a second later, like he’d had an idea, he said, “Are you okay here on your own for a minute?” “I am now—and will continue to always be—one hundred percent okay,” I insisted, forehead still pressed to the concrete. “Be right back then,” Joe said. A few minutes later, I heard a chunk noise—just as the music cut out and it seemed like my dark corner got darker. Then I heard the ambient sound of a puzzled crowd. Then I heard Joe’s voice. “Power outage, guys. Looks like the party’s over.” Oh god, he was my hero. Just knowing they were leaving drained the stress from my body. By the time Joe came back, I was sitting up, leaning against the brick wall, breathing. Like a pro. “Did you just flip the breaker and pretend there was a power outage?” I asked. “Yep,” Joe said. “And everybody went home?” I asked. “Yep.” “And then you came back to check on me?” Joe shrugged, like, Obviously. “Did you worry at all that the darkness might freak me out?” “Nah,” Joe said. “We’ve got the moon.” I looked up and saw it for the first time. It was brighter than I’d realized. “I guess we do.” It occurred to me then that I might have to start altering some of my opinions about Joe. Next I asked, “And once the coast is clear, are


before the Revolution, it was said, the number had only been 15 per cent. The Party claimed that the infant mortality rate was now only 160 per thousand, whereas before the Revolution it had been 300--and so it went on. It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy. For all he knew there might never have been any such law as the JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS, or any such creature as a capitalist, or any such garment as a top hat. Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. Just once in his life he had possessed--AFTER the event: that was what counted--concrete, unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification. He had held it between his fingers for as long as thirty seconds. In 1973, it must have been--at any rate, it was at about the time file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (42 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:51 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt when he and Katharine had parted. But the really relevant date was seven or eight years earlier. The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter-revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew where, and of the others, a few had simply disappeared, while the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have been in 1965 that these three had been arrested. As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more, so that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then had suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in the usual way. They had confessed to intelligence with the enemy (at that date, too, the enemy was Eurasia), embezzlement of public funds, the murder of various trusted Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother which had started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people. After confessing to these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. All three had written long, abject articles in 'The Times', analysing the reasons for their defection and promising to make amends. Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were men far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The glamour


between the girls. Sarah continued to eat her sandwich and Iris cradled her tea, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was nearly time to return to her desk when she dared to lean closer to Sarah and whisper, “Do you ever pay attention to what the Inkridden Tribune publishes?” Sarah’s eyebrows shot upward. “The Inkridden Tribune? Why on earth would you—” Iris held a finger to her lips, heart quickening. It would be her luck if Zeb happened to walk by and hear them. Sarah lowered her voice, sheepish. “Well, no. Because I don’t want to get fired.” “I saw the paper yesterday,” Iris continued. “On the street. They were reporting on monsters at the front.” “Monsters?” Iris began to describe the image from the paper—wings, talons, teeth. She couldn’t stifle her shudder as she did, nor could she untangle the image of Forest from it. “Have you ever heard of one?” Iris asked. “They’re called eithrals,” Sarah said. “We touched on them briefly in my mythology class, years ago. There are a few stories about them in some of the older tomes in the library…” She paused, a startled expression stealing across her face. “You’re not thinking to write your own report on them, are you, Winnow?” “I’m debating. But why are you looking at me that way, Prindle?” “Because I don’t think Autry would like it.” And I don’t care what he thinks! Iris wanted to say, but it wasn’t completely true. She did care, but only because she couldn’t afford to lose to Roman. She needed to pay the electricity bill. She needed to purchase a nice set of shoes that fit. She needed to eat regularly. She needed to find her mother help. And yet she wanted to write about what was happening in the west. She wanted to write the truth. She wanted to know what Forest was facing at the front. “Don’t you think Oath needs to know what’s truly happening out there?” she whispered. “Of course,” Sarah replied, pushing her glasses up her nose. “But who knows if eithrals are truly at the front or not. I mean, what if—” She abruptly cut herself off, her eyes flickering beyond Iris. Iris straightened and turned, wincing when she saw Roman standing on the kitchen threshold. He was leaning on the doorframe, watching her with hooded eyes. She didn’t know how much he had overheard, and she attempted a smile, even as her stomach dropped. “Conspiring, are we?” he drawled. “Course we are,” Iris countered brightly, holding her teacup like a toast. “Thank you for the tip, Prindle. I need to get back to work.” “But you haven’t eaten anything, Winnow!” Sarah protested. “I’m not hungry,” Iris said as she approached the doorway. “Pardon me, Kitt.” Roman didn’t move. His gaze was fixed on her as if he wanted to read her mind, and Iris fought the temptation to smooth the stray tendrils of her hair, to anxiously roll her lips together. He opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it, his


I’ve been telling him. I’m just not the best with all the sciency stuff. And I don’t mind being a werewolf. In fact, I think I kind of kick ass at it? Caleb attempts to howl, then dissolves into a coughing fit. Well. Most of the time. HUX It’s not for him. It’s . . . for someone else. CALEB Have you even asked her, Hux? Maybe you should start there, huh? HUX Well, no. But you think if she had a choice, this is really what she’d pick? CALEB He moves closer to Hux, jabbing a finger at his chest. We have super strength, super speed, and night vision. I can hear conversations happening a mile away. I can heal myself if I get hurt. And not to brag, but it’s just a fact—we’re more beautiful than the rest of you. Shinier hair, perfect skin, bigger muscles. Who wouldn’t want that? HUX How would you know what she wants? CALEB Because I’m the one who turned her. chapter fourteen MEMPHIS, TN The energy between us is different as dusk falls. Kinetic. My sleeve brushes Finn’s at least a half dozen times, and he forgets to drop his palm when it lands on my lower back for a few extra moments. After a walk to the waterfront, I ask if he’s ready to go back to the hotel and his breathy yes jolts my heart into a new rhythm. The evening is unseasonably warm for late September, the humid air filling my lungs and making me a little unsteady on my feet. No alcohol, just a steady shot of lust straight to my brain. I switch on the lights in my room and empty the bag from the sex shop onto the bed. As nonchalantly as I can, I flip over the mystery novel on my nightstand. I’m not embarrassed of it; The Sourdough Slayer just isn’t the sexiest title. Our next lesson was supposed to be oral sex, but there’s no reason we can’t spice it up. Another deviation from my outline, but an essential one. Based on the way Finn’s eyeing our stash, he’s thinking the same thing. “It would be a shame if we didn’t test all these out,” he says, turning over a textured condom. “Make sure everything works.” “I couldn’t agree more.” He reaches for the vibrator, pulling open the packaging. “Anything I should know before using this?” “Start slow,” I say, even though I’m already eager to get his hands on me. “But otherwise . . . feel free to play around with it.” “I fully intend to.” Then he places it on the nightstand, turning his attention back to me. “Soon,” he promises, sitting down on the bed, patting the spot next to him. It’s a small amount of direction, but my body thrills at the thought of him taking control— and knowing what to do. “I liked today,” he continues, lifting a hand to run through my hair. My eyes slide shut at the gentle press of his fingertips. His other hand comes up


with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour."     "Besides, the fire is too hot for you," interposed Mary.     "To be sure," added her sister. "Come, you must be obedient." And still holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.     "Sit there," she said, placing me on the sofa, "while we take our things off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our little moorland home to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined; or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing or ironing."     She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand. I examined first the parlor, and then its occupant.     The parlor was rather a small room, very plainly furnished; yet comfortable, because clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very bright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass. A few strange antique portraits of men and women of other days decorated the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous ornament in the room not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of work-boxes and a lady's desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table: everything including the carpet and curtains looked at once well worn and well saved.     Mr. St. John sitting as still as one of the dusky pictures on the walls; keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier. He was young perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead, colorless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.     This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible, or even a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top of the oven.     "Eat that


vocabulary; and now that Medora Manson, who shared her life, had been ruined, such a pittance would barely keep the two women clothed and fed. Yet Archer was convinced that Madame Olenska had not accepted her grandmother's offer from interested motives. She had the heedless generosity and the spasmodic extravagance of persons used to large fortunes, and indifferent to money; but she could go without many things which her relations considered indispensable, and Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Welland had often been heard to deplore that any one who had enjoyed the cosmopolitan luxuries of Count Olenski's establishments should care so little about "how things were done." Moreover, as Archer knew, several months had passed since her allowance had been cut off; yet in the interval she had made no effort to regain her grand- mother's favour. Therefore if she had changed her course it must be for a different reason. He did not have far to seek for that reason. On the way from the ferry she had told him that he and she must remain apart; but she had said it with her head on his breast. He knew that there was no calculated coquetry in her words; she was fighting her fate as he had fought his, and clinging desperately to her resolve that they should not break faith with the people who trusted them. But during the ten days which had elapsed since her return to New York she had perhaps guessed from his silence, and from the fact of his making no attempt to see her, that he was meditating a decisive step, a step from which there was no turning back. At the thought, a sudden fear of her own weakness might have seized her, and she might have felt that, after all, it was better to accept the compromise usual in such cases, and follow the line of least resistance. An hour earlier, when he had rung Mrs. Mingott's bell, Archer had fancied that his path was clear before him. He had meant to have a word alone with Madame Olenska, and failing that, to learn from her grandmother on what day, and by which train, she was returning to Washington. In that train he intended to join her, and travel with her to Washington, or as much farther as she was willing to go. His own fancy inclined to Japan. At any rate she would understand at once that, wherever she went, he was going. He meant to leave a note for May that should cut off any other alternative. He had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge but eager to take it; yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events was changed had been one of relief. Now, however, as he walked home from Mrs. Mingott's, he was conscious of a growing distaste for what lay before him. There was nothing unknown or unfamiliar in the path he was presumably to tread; but when he had trodden it before it was as a free man, who was accountable


at mealtimes. He went out for football, but was too slender and too young yet to do anything but carry the team water buckets. This he did with enthusiasm; most afternoons he was seldom home before dark. The Radley Place had ceased to terrify me, but it was no less gloomy, no less chilly under its great oaks, and no less uninviting. Mr. Nathan Radley could still be seen on a clear day, walking to and from town; we knew Boo was there, for the same old reason- nobody'd seen him carried out yet. I sometimes felt a twinge of remorse, when passing by the old place, at ever having taken part in what must have been sheer torment to Arthur Radley- what reasonable recluse wants children peeping through his shutters, delivering greetings on the end of a fishing-pole, wandering in his collards at night? And yet I remembered. Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soap dolls, a rusty medal, a broken watch and chain. Jem must have put them away somewhere. I stopped and looked at the tree one afternoon: the trunk was swelling around its cement patch. The patch itself was turning yellow. We had almost seen him a couple of times, a good enough score for anybody. But I still looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday we would see him. I imagined how it would be: when it happened, he'd just be sitting in the swing when I came along. "Hidy do, Mr. Arthur," I would say, as if I had said it every afternoon of my life. "Evening, Jean Louise," he would say, as if he had said it every afternoon of my life, "right pretty spell we're having, isn't it?" "Yes sir, right pretty," I would say, and go on. It was only a fantasy. We would never see him. He probably did go out when the moon was down and gaze upon Miss Stephanie Crawford. I'd have picked somebody else to look at, but that was his business. He would never gaze at us. "You aren't starting that again, are you?" said Atticus one night, when I expressed a stray desire just to have one good look at Boo Radley before I died. "If you are, I'll tell you right now: stop it. I'm too old to go chasing you off the Radley property. Besides, it's dangerous. You might get shot. You know Mr. Nathan shoots at every shadow he sees, even shadows that leave size-four bare footprints. You were lucky not to be killed." I hushed then and there. At the same time I marveled at Atticus. This was the first he had let us know he knew a lot more about something than we thought he knew. And it had happened years ago. No, only last summer- no, summer before last, when... time was playing tricks on me. I must remember to ask Jem. So many things had happened to us, Boo Radley was the least of our fears. Atticus said he didn't see how anything else could happen, that things


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

only unanswerable proof that any man can show of his possessing the means so to do. No more then. Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere; and give him fair notice, that if I find him on my new premises I will then proceed against him as a common trespasser. Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed him: “I find these chambers too far from the City Hall; the air is unwholesome. In a word, I propose to remove my offices next week, and shall no longer require your services. I tell you this now, in order that you may seek another place.” He made no reply, and nothing more was said. On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded to my chambers, and having but little furniture, every thing was removed in a few hours. Throughout, the scrivener remained standing behind the screen, which I directed to be removed the last thing. It was withdrawn; and being folded up like a huge folio, left him the motionless occupant of a naked room. I stood in the entry watching him a moment, while something from within me upbraided me. I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket—and—and my heart in my mouth. “Good-bye, Bartleby; I am going—good-bye, and God some way bless you; and take that,” slipping something in his hand. But it dropped upon the floor, and then,—strange to say—I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of. Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept the door locked, and started at every footfall in the passages. When I returned to my rooms after any little absence, I would pause at the threshold for an instant, and attentively listen, ere applying my key. But these fears were needless. Bartleby never came nigh me. I thought all was going well, when a perturbed looking stranger visited me, inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms at No.—Wall-street. Full of forebodings, I replied that I was. “Then sir,” said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, “you are responsible for the man you left there. He refuses to do any copying; he refuses to do any thing; he says he prefers not to; and he refuses to quit the premises.” “I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquility, but an inward tremor, “but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to me—he is no relation or apprentice of mine, that you should hold me responsible for him.” “In mercy’s name, who is he?” “I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I employed him as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me now for some time past.” “I shall settle him then,—good morning, sir.” Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and though I often felt a charitable prompting to call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet a certain squeamishness of I know not what withheld me.


and reckonings. He was twenty-one and a man of the world: he was going to bend it to his will. “Don’t mess me about, Danny,” she said. He shrugged. “The risk’s on you. Take it or leave it.” He called a spade a spade, did Danny. Or at least he did when it pleased him. When it suited the story. But she understood that, too, didn’t she? She gave him what he needed in the end. Enough to buy his ticket all the way across the world, to the Cape Colony. I’m on the make, she told herself, reading his letters, racing through the newspapers, waiting for him to buy his first claim, purchase his first stones, start making returns. It was very wonderful, that heart-stopping, breathless feeling. That certainty that she was sorted, that this was it, this was her made, forever. It lasted until the letters stopped. Till Danny dropped her. Vanished altogether. At first she couldn’t credit it. She went up to town, waited outside the offices of the only mining company she knew, doorstepped a clerk on his way home for dinner. There were a whole host of women on the pavement, waving billets and ticket stubs and blurry photographs, asking for news of husbands and brothers and cousins who’d gone off to the mines. “It’s about my brother,” she said. “Daniel O’Flynn.” The clerk was a young man, but he had silvery threads in his hair. He smoothed them now, irritation written all across his face. “Madam. I get inquiries such as these nearly every week. There are as many as fifty thousand men out there. You understand? I would have—we have—simply no way of knowing all their movements.” She squared up to him, pressed a letter into his hand. “Put out an inquiry. That’s all I’m asking.” The clerk clicked his tongue in impatience. “I see I must be frank with you. It is a hard life out there. It’s been a long, taxing summer. Even when they take the greatest care in the world, men put their lives in the hands of their Maker every day.” He frowned. “Is this an insurance matter?” he asked. “If so, I really must reserve my counsel.” This notion, that Danny could be dead, carried no credence with her. She turned her back on that clerk and marched home. There was no circumstance on earth in which Danny would have got himself killed. He was too hard-shell, too wily, for that. He would have negotiated with the boulder before it fell on his head. She pictured him in a shack office somewhere on the other side of the globe, heat raging down on him through a slatted window. Signing contracts, pondering his signature. He never respected his name. He hated being an O’Flynn, being one of a multitude, cousins crawling all over the neighborhood. “I’d like to live forever, Scarecrow,” he used to say, lying awake at night, bouncing a rubber ball off the beams. “Forever.” He’d return—she’d always been certain of that. The rest of the family wore


said. “You’d better get it out of her backpack tonight or she’ll forget.” “I’m doing amazingly well, wouldn’t you say?” Although he said it lightly, Maud heard the supplication in his voice. He’d understood what she meant about changing schools. “You’re doing great,” she said. He still thinks there’s hope, she thought, after they’d hung up. She had told Peter clearly that she didn’t see this summer as a trial or a test—she saw it as a transition. But Peter had his own stubborn optimism. He believed that he was proving to her that he could change, that he would pitch in more around the house and be more present with the girls when she returned. And yet, he was also proving that he could take care of Ella and Louise on his own. At seven, having read an article about the origins of the gravel she and Gabriel had found in the garden, she dropped a sundress over her head and brushed out her hair, letting it fall on her shoulders instead of its usual loose ponytail. Chopsticks or fork? Gabriel texted. Chopsticks! she texted back. I’m dying to know your idea for the beds. I’ll give you a clue: Light. That doesn’t help. Pls run. Coming! She fetched a bottle of wine from the refrigerator and the chipped coffee mugs they used as glasses. Outside, Gabriel was already at their meeting place—a wrought-iron table near the orchard—with a manila folder, two plates, and a bag of Chinese food. “Finally,” he said when she sat down across from him in one of the four rusty chairs flanking the table. “That was two minutes. Patience is not your virtue.” He held up the folder. “I won’t show you these lab results until you tell me.” “Fine,” she said. As she uncorked the bottle of wine, she explained her idea about the headlights. “That works?” Gabriel said. “I saw it work once. Could you help with your truck?” “Are you kidding? You think I’d miss that?” She filled their mugs with wine. Over Gabriel’s shoulder, swifts swam through the orchard, rustling glossy plum leaves. Plum blossoms in Chinese poetry. The nineteenth-century crossbreeding experimentations that resulted in the plumcot. The cyanide in the stone. Maud’s mind had awakened, new facts and anecdotes always cropping up. And so had her body, she thought, as she and Gabriel clinked mugs. In his presence, each gesture—as small as taking the manila folder he pushed across the table—felt heightened, unconsciously orchestrated. And she gathered his gestures too, like clues: the way he threw back his head as he laughed at her description of forgetting her shoes earlier, the way he caught his lower lip in his teeth as the two of them looked over the laboratory results. “High carbon,” she said. “The conservatory fire?” “Probably.” They were talking about work, but another conversation ran under the surface. She’d had workplace crushes before, most recently on a literary historian in Sussex whom she’d met at a pub for passionate discussions about the flowers in William Wordsworth’s poems until he


was the stars that made it seem so noble. 'There has been no change at home,' said Agnes, after a few moments. 'No fresh reference,' said I, 'to - I wouldn't distress you, Agnes, but I cannot help asking - to what we spoke of, when we parted last?' 'No, none,' she answered. 'I have thought so much about it.' 'You must think less about it. Remember that I confide in simple love and truth at last. Have no apprehensions for me, Trotwood,' she added, after a moment; 'the step you dread my taking, I shall never take.' Although I think I had never really feared it, in any season of cool reflection, it was an unspeakable relief to me to have this assurance from her own truthful lips. I told her so, earnestly. 'And when this visit is over,' said I, - 'for we may not be alone another time, - how long is it likely to be, my dear Agnes, before you come to London again?' 'Probably a long time,' she replied; 'I think it will be best - for papa's sake - to remain at home. We are not likely to meet often, for some time to come; but I shall be a good correspondent of Dora's, and we shall frequently hear of one another that way.' We were now within the little courtyard of the Doctor's cottage. It was growing late. There was a light in the window of Mrs. Strong's chamber, and Agnes, pointing to it, bade me good night. 'Do not be troubled,' she said, giving me her hand, 'by our misfortunes and anxieties. I can be happier in nothing than in your happiness. If you can ever give me help, rely upon it I will ask you for it. God bless you always!' In her beaming smile, and in these last tones of her cheerful voice, I seemed again to see and hear my little Dora in her company. I stood awhile, looking through the porch at the stars, with a heart full of love and gratitude, and then walked slowly forth. I had engaged a bed at a decent alehouse close by, and was going out at the gate, when, happening to turn my head, I saw a light in the Doctor's study. A half-reproachful fancy came into my mind, that he had been working at the Dictionary without my help. With the view of seeing if this were so, and, in any case, of bidding him good night, if he were yet sitting among his books, I turned back, and going softly across the hall, and gently opening the door, looked in. The first person whom I saw, to my surprise, by the sober light of the shaded lamp, was Uriah. He was standing close beside it, with one of his skeleton hands over his mouth, and the other resting on the Doctor's table. The Doctor sat in his study chair, covering his face with his hands. Mr. Wickfield, sorely troubled and distressed, was leaning forward, irresolutely touching the Doctor's arm. For an


hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night. Beginning to tell on him now: that backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his back. Thinks he'll cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they are. About six hundred per cent profit. --He's in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I'll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me. He cried above the clatter of the wheels: --I won't have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper's son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Not likely. He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up. She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life begins. Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her. I could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent. Learn German too. --Are we late? Mr Power asked. --Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch. Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she's a dear girl. Soon be a woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too. Life, life. The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying. --Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said. --He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn't that squint troubling him. Do you follow me? He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs. --What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs? --Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power said. All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless leather of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said: --Unless I'm greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin? --It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said. Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. Mr Dedalus


Judy caught her right in time and they both laughed. “Next Thursday is the opening day for the Christmas Spectacular. I’ll leave a ticket for you for the six-o’clock show. Is that all right? You’ll come?” Judy gave a quick nod. “I’ll be there.” CHAPTER THIRTEEN The first two shows of the Christmas Spectacular went by in a whirlwind for Marion, and while she adored the applause and the smiling faces of the children who waited for autographs outside the stage door, she blew past them, apologizing profusely, in order to meet Judy at the Rehearsal Club. She’d convinced her sister—over a rushed call—to come early so she could properly show her around her new life. Once Judy saw how well she was doing, she would report back to Simon and his curiosity might get the best of him, and he’d overcome his stubbornness. Judy was waiting near the steps to the Rehearsal Club’s front door, clutching her purse tightly to her side. She’d dressed up for the occasion, wearing her camel hair coat instead of her work trench, her hair tied back in a red bow. The fact that she’d made an effort moved Marion almost to tears. “You look marvelous,” she said. “The bow’s a nice touch. Do you remember Mom dressed us up in gorgeous red velvet dresses when we went to the Christmas Spectacular? We looked like a couple of princesses.” “I remember the collar being very itchy and wanting to throw it on the floor,” said Judy. Some things would never change. “Well, why don’t you come on up and I can show you my new digs?” Inside, a couple of the actresses screeched with laughter in the parlor while another boarder trying to use the telephone yelled for them to quiet down. “It’s not usually so crazy,” said Marion over the din. “The woman who runs it, Mrs. Fleming, is very strict about things like curfews and not letting boys up. Sort of like the Barbizon Hotel for Women, but for creative types. Noisy creative types,” she joked. Judy gave a wan smile. Upstairs, Marion threw open the door to her room, which she’d spent a couple of hours that morning dusting and straightening up. The lumpy beds were a far cry from the sturdy cast-iron ones in Bronxville, and the orange curtains were just as ugly as they had ever been, but she’d done the best she could. To her dismay, Bunny’s side of the room looked like a cyclone had hit. Her dresser drawers were open, clothes tossed on the bed as well as the floor. From the bathroom, Bunny’s voice rang out. “I cannot find my good garter belt and bra. I know they’re here somewhere, but you have to help me look.” “Bunny, I—” “Don’t tell Mrs. Fleming, but I’m going to stay at a hotel with Dale tonight. His wife is off visiting relatives . . .” Her words trailed off as she stepped out of the bathroom, a pair of black stockings draped over one arm, and caught sight of


overwhelms me. I always feel this way as the game commences, and the high is dizzying. My single complaint is that the fake blood he’s drenched in is too opaque. I like it better when I can see through it just a little. “Please!” Javier screams as he clings to the doorjamb, chest heaving. “Please help me! He—he’s out there!” “Who?” I ask. “What are you talking about?” I know my lines as well as I know my own name. “A guy in a mask!” Javier bellows, real tears glinting in his eyes. “Help me!” The brunette gasps as she clings to her friend, her eyes wide, her mouth halfway open. She’s terrified. Only me and the remaining staff know that it’s about to get a lot worse for her specifically. The rude guests are always the ones who end up crying or pissing their pants first. Over the course of the next few hours, the guests move through a carefully curated series of experiences. I like to make sure they have a good view of Kyle in his mask, machete in hand, as he carves up Javier, Porter, and Tasha one by one. Of course we leave time for guests to “hide” or try to make their own plans for navigating the camp, but it’s all a part of the game even if they don’t realize it. Halfway through the game, the guests end up separating, and Javier and Tasha have to herd them back to a common area so that we can move them toward the next gruesome display. While they handle that, I find myself alone by the lake. I separate from the group early in the game so I can help with other special effects. I’m waiting for my cue, which, for tonight’s game, is the audio of a girl screaming at the top of her lungs played over the tiny speakers hidden in the trees near the guest cabins. When it sounds, my job is to dump a bucket of fake blood mixed with a few pieces of raw chicken onto the path so the guests come across it. As I wait in the shadow of a towering pine tree near Mirror Lake’s shore, there’s a splash in the water behind me. I turn to look, expecting to see one of the guests doing something they’re not supposed to be doing, but there’s no one. I take a step toward the lake. Just offshore, I spot something in the water. A shadowy human-size shape bobbing near the surface. Their head and shoulders move up and down, but I can’t see their face. “Hey!” I shout. “Get out of there! You can’t be in the water!” I edge my way along the shore. Who the hell is out there? Who’d want to be? “Hey!” I shout again. “Charity, go!” A voice sounds in my earpiece, and my heart jumps into my throat. I scramble back to the path and spill the bucket of blood and raw chicken across the dirt. In the dark, it looks like somebody has


giggle. “Ke ke ke ke ke ke ke . . .” he said and started rubbing his hands over his belly again. “Pupkin home.” One of his nubbins reached up and stroked the side of his face. “Ke ke ke ke ke ke ke . . .” Then he slowly sank into the blankets, still watching Louise, stroking one nub along the side of his face, soothing himself. Louise stood up, never taking her eyes off Pupkin, and left the room. In the front hall she called Mark. He picked up on the first ring. “I was just about to call you,” he said in a rush, and his voice sounded clearer now, more decisive. “I know what to do.” “He wants to know where Mom is,” she said. “He thinks she’s playing hide-and-seek.” “He’s talking,” Mark said. “That’s good. Write down anything he says. It might be important.” “I can’t have him on Poppy’s arm for another minute,” she hissed. “He cut her, Mark. He got a knife and cut her, and if I try to take him off he’ll do it again.” “Come home,” Mark said. It threw her. “What?” “You need to come home,” Mark said. “We can only deal with him here.” “No,” Louise said, shaking her head from side to side even though he couldn’t see her. This was a bad idea. She thought about the house, the attic, Spider, the squirrels, the Mark and Louise dolls. She wasn’t going near any of them ever again. “Oh, no. I’m not walking into that trap.” “We’re out of our depth,” Mark said. “So we need an expert. That’s what I was going to tell you. I called Mercy.” This conversation kept taking turns Louise couldn’t follow. “What?” she asked again. “Mark, this is my daughter. Mercy sells real estate. Be serious.” “I am being serious,” he said. “I don’t know anything about talking puppets or possession or ghosts or hauntings, but Aunt Gail? This is where she lives. And family are the people who can’t say no. You need to come home.” Chapter 31 T he fun started at Security. “She needs to take her doll off her arm,” the TSA guy monotoned. “No,” Pupkin shrieked. “No! No! No!” “Hang on, Poppy, it’s okay,” Louise said sweetly, then lowered her voice to that special frequency only other adults could hear. “Is there anything you can do?” The TSA agent gave her a look that said Pampered mothers, spoiled kids. “She needs to remove her doll to go through the scanner,” he repeated. “If you could just help me out,” Louise pleaded. “She’s having a hard day.” “Ma’am, are you going to be a problem for me?” “What about a pat-down?” she asked. “No!” Pupkin shrieked. “Pupkin stay! Pupkin stay!” People looked over to see what this horrible mother was doing to her little girl. Louise felt them noticing the bandages up and down Poppy’s left arm, the scratches and bruises on Louise’s face, the bite mark on the back of her hand. “If you could let her keep


a treasury of good counsel and wise lore. In that house were harboured the Heirs of Isildur, in childhood and old age, because of the kinship of their blood with Elrond himself, and because he knew in his wisdom that one should come of their line to whom a great part was appointed in the last deeds of that Age. And until that time came the shards of Elendil's sword were given into the keeping of Elrond, when the days of the Dnedain darkened and they became a wandering people. In Eriador Imladris was the chief dwelling of the High Elves; but at the Grey Havens of Lindon there abode also a remnant of the people of Gil-galad the Elvenking. At times they would wander into the lands of Eriador, but for the most part they dwelt near the shores of the sea, building and tending the elven-ships wherein those of the Firstborn who grew weary of the world set sail into the uttermost West Crdan the Shipwright was lord of the Havens and mighty among the Wise. Of the Three Rings that the Elves had preserved unsullied no open word was ever spoken among the Wise, and few even of the Eldar knew where they were bestowed. Yet after the fall of Sauron their power was ever at work, and where they abode there mirth also dwelt and all things were unstained by the griefs of time. Therefore ere the Third Age was ended the Elves perceived that the Ring of Sapphire was with Elrond, in the fair valley of Rivendell, upon whose house the stars of heaven most brightly shone; whereas the Ring of Adamant was in the Land of Lrien where dwelt the Lady Galadriel. A queen she was of the woodland Elves, the wife of Celeborn of Doriath, yet she herself was of the Noldor and remembered the Day before days in Valinor, and she was the mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth. But the Red Ring remained hidden until the end, and none save Elrond and Galadriel and Crdan knew to whom it had been committed. Thus it was that in two domains the bliss and beauty of the Elves remained still undiminished while that Age endured: in Imladris; and in Lothlrien, the hidden land between Celebrant and Anduin, where the trees bore flowers of gold and no Orc or evil thing dared ever come. Yet many voices were heard among the Elves foreboding that, if Sauron should come again, then either he would find the Ruling Ring that was lost, or at the best his enemies would discover it and destroy it; but in either chance the powers of the Three must then fail and all things maintained by them must fade, and so the Elves should pass into the twilight and the Dominion of Men begin. And so indeed it has since befallen: the One and the Seven and the Nine are destroyed; and the Three have passed away, and with them the Third Age is ended, and the Tales


saved us. I made it so we would always be tied together, we would always be friends—and Liv would never let anything happen between you that might take you two away from me. And we got to be heroes, Naomi. Do you think your life would have been anything but utterly mediocre, if I hadn’t done what I did? It all worked out. For all of us.” I thought of how brave she’d been, after. How she’d flourished, playing the spokesperson for the three of us, interviewed by serious journalists who spoke to her with deference and kindness. How she’d flung herself into the role of caretaker and protector, and everyone had bought it. Had worshipped her. And part of me wondered if she was right. If I had never been attacked, had never turned into the miracle girl, where would I be? In Chester, probably. In a dead-end job, a drunk like my father. But Liv would be alive. “She was going to tell. She was going to ruin everything I worked so hard to make,” Cass said, as if imploring me to understand. As if she truly believed I might. “I’ve got it,” Cody said brusquely, and Cass glanced toward him. He’d laid out the tarp. The handle of a hacksaw stuck out of the duffel. I looked away quickly, my stomach roiling at the thought of what that was meant for. “All right. Enough talk. Stand up,” Cass said, gesturing with the gun. It was like something she’d seen in a movie. I pushed to my feet. She directed me over to the tarp. “Kneel down,” she ordered. Her voice shook now. She wasn’t as tough as she wanted to think she was, I thought. This version of Cass was like all the others. Something that she’d decided on, constructed piece by piece. Friend, protector, mother, cold-blooded killer. A false front, and absolutely nothing behind it. I wondered if she even understood why she did the things she did, or if she was acting on pure instinct and filling in logic after the fact. And she’d always been like that. The day we met, she hadn’t chosen us because she thought we were special. She’d chosen us because one glance was enough to tell her that we were so damaged we wouldn’t see the rot already festering inside her. “I spent my whole life trying to heal from something that never happened,” I said. “You were my friend. You stayed my friend. You told me you cared about me. You made yourself part of my life after you’d done that to me. What were you thinking when you saw my scars and knew they were your fault? When I told you about my nightmares? When you promised me that Stahl wasn’t going to get me? Was it funny to you?” “A little,” she said viciously. Her teeth flashed once. Her eyes were empty and cold, and something primal surged within me, an ancestral instinct birthed before we had words for the thing she was. Ethan had seen it, I


and left him there in the dark beneath the oak, amidst the quiet of the godswood, under a blue-black sky. The stars were coming out. DAENERYS The heart was steaming in the cool evening air when Khal Drogo set it before her, raw and bloody. His arms were red to the elbow. Behind him, his bloodriders knelt on the sand beside the corpse of the wild stallion, stone knives in their hands. The stallion's blood looked black in the flickering orange glare of the torches that ringed the high chalk walls of the pit. Dany touched the soft swell of her belly. Sweat beaded her skin and trickled down her brow. She could feel the old women watching her, the ancient crones of Vaes Dothrak, with eyes that shone dark as polished flint in their wrinkled faces. She must not flinch or look afraid. I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself as she took the stallion's heart in both hands, lifted it to her mouth, and plunged her teeth into the tough, stringy flesh. Warm blood filled her mouth and ran down over her chin. The taste threatened to gag her, but she made herself chew and swallow. The heart of a stallion would make her son strong and swift and fearless, or so the Dothraki believed, but only if the mother could eat it all. If she choked on the blood or retched up the flesh, the omens were less favorable; the child might be stillborn, or come forth weak, deformed, or female. Her handmaids had helped her ready herself for the ceremony. Despite the tender mother's stomach that had afflicted her these past A GAME OF THRONES 431 two moons, Dany had dined on bowls of half-clotted blood to accustom herself to the taste, and Irri made her chew strips of dried horseflesh until her jaws were aching. She had starved herself for a day and a night before the ceremony in the hopes that hunger would help her keep down the raw meat. The wild stallion's heart was all muscle, and Dany had to worry it with her teeth and chew each mouthful a long time. No steel was permitted within the sacred confines of Vaes Dothrak, beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains; she had to rip the heart apart with teeth and nails. Her stomach roiled and heaved, yet she kept on, her face smeared with the heartsblood that sometimes seemed to explode against her lips. Khal Drogo stood over her as she ate, his face as hard as a bronze shield. His long black braid was shiny with oil. He wore gold rings in his mustache, gold bells in his braid, and a heavy belt of solid gold medallions around his waist, but his chest was bare. She looked at him whenever she felt her strength failing; looked at him, and chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. Toward the end, Dany thought she glimpsed a fierce pride in his dark, almondshaped eyes, but she could not be sure. The


talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read." Faber examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face. "How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands?" "I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help." "You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the `parlour families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right, that's what counts. Three things are missing. "Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more `literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. "So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But when he was


small house, the "medicine house" or shrine where Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal god and of his ancestral spirits. He worshipped them with sacrifices of kola nut, food and palm-wine, and offered prayers to them on behalf of himself, his three wives and eight children. So when the daughter of Umuofia was killed in Mbaino, Ikemefuna came into Okonkwo's household. When Okonkwo brought him home that day he called his most senior wife and handed him over to her. "He belongs to the clan," he told her. "So look after him." "Is he staying long with us?" she asked. "Do what you are told, woman," Okonkwo thundered, and stammered. "When did you become one of the ndichie of Umuofia?" And so Nwoye's mother took Ikemefuna to her hut and asked no more questions. As for the boy himself, he was terribly afraid. He could not understand what was happening to him or what he had done. How could he know that his father had taken a hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia? All he knew was that a few men had arrived at their house, conversing with his father in low tones, and at the end he had been taken out and handed over to a stranger. His mother had wept bitterly, but he had been too surprised to weep. And so the stranger had brought him, and a girl, a long, long way from home, through lonely forest paths. He did not know who the girl was, and he never saw her again. CHAPTER THREE Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had. He did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit. The story was told in Umuofia, of how his father, Unoka, had gone to consult the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves to find out why he always had a miserable harvest. The Oracle was called Agbala, and people came from far and near to consult it. They came when misfortune dogged their steps or when they had a dispute with their neighbours. They came to discover what the future held for them or to consult the spirits of their departed fathers. The way into the shrine was a round hole at the side of a hill, just a little bigger than the round opening into a henhouse. Worshippers and those who came to seek knowledge from the god crawled on their belly through the hole and found themselves in a dark, endless space in the presence of Agbala. No one had ever beheld Agbala, except his priestess. But no one who had ever crawled into his awful shrine had come out without the fear of his power. His priestess stood by the sacred fire which she built in the heart of the cave and proclaimed the will of the god. The fire did not burn with a flame. The glowing logs only served to light up vaguely the dark figure of the priestess. Sometimes a man came to consult the spirit


at them in one solid blaze wherever they looked. "Very pretty," said Zaphod petulantly. In the sky a huge green catalogue number appeared. It flickered and changed, and when they looked around again so had the land. As with one voice they all went, "Yuch." The sea was purple. The beach they were on was composed of tiny yellow and green pebbles - presumably terribly precious stones. The mountains in the distance seemed soft and undulating with red peaks. Nearby stood a solid silver beach table with a frilly mauve parasol and silver tassles. In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalogue number. It said, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud. And five hundred entirely naked women dropped out of the sky on parachutes. In a moment the scene vanished and left them in a springtime meadow full of cows. "Ow!" said Zaphod. "My brains!" "You want to talk about it?" said Ford. "Yeah, OK," said Zaphod, and all three sat down and ignored the scenes that came and went around them. "I figure this," said Zaphod. "Whatever happened to my mind, I did it. And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the government screening tests. And I wasn't to know anything about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?" The other two nodded in agreement. "So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don't know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. You remember Yooden, Ford?" "Yeah," said Ford, "he was that guy we met when we were kids, the Arcturan captain. He was a gas. He gave us conkers when you bust your way into his megafreighter. Said you were the most amazing kid he'd ever met." "What's all this?" said Trillian. "Ancient history," said Ford, "when we were kids together on Betelgeuse. The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the bulky trade between the Galactic Centre and the outlying regions The Betelgeuse trading scouts used to find the markets and the Arcturans would supply them. There was a lot of trouble with space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars, and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic defence shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes of ships, and huge. In orbit round a planet they would eclipse the sun. "One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one. On a tri-jet scooter designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid. I mean forget it, it was crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for the ride because I'd got some very safe money on him not doing it, and didn't want him coming back with fake evidence. So what happens? We got in his tri-jet which he had souped up into something totally other,


Around them, she recognized the cellar room where Paul had slept, saw his cot at one side--empty. Suspensor lamps were brought in by guards, distributed near the open door. There was a glare of light in the hallway beyond that hurt her eyes. She looked up at the Baron. He wore a yellow cape that bulged over his portable suspensors. The fat cheeks were two cherubic mounds beneath spider-black eyes. "The drug was timed," he rumbled. "We knew to the minute when you'd be coming out of it." How could that be? she wondered. They 'd have to know my exact weight, my metabolism, my . . . Yueh! "Such a pity you must remain gagged," the Baron said. "We could have such an interesting conversation." Yueh's the only one it could be, she thought. How? The Baron glanced behind him at the door. "Come in, Piter." She had never before seen the man who entered to stand beside the Baron, but the face was known--and the man: Piter de Vries, the Mentat-Assassin. She studied him--hawk features, blue-ink eyes that suggested he was a native of Arrakis, but subtleties of movement and stance told her he was not. And his flesh was too well firmed with water. He was tall, though slender, and something about him suggested effeminacy. "Such a pity we cannot have our conversation, my dear Lady Jessica." the Baron said. "However, I'm aware of your abilities." He glanced at the Mentat. "Isn't that true, Piter?" "As you say, Baron," the man said. The voice was tenor. It touched her spine with a wash of coldness. She had never heard such a chill voice. To one with the Bene Gesserit training, the voice screamed: Killer! "I have a surprise for Piter," the Baron said. "He thinks he has come here to collect his reward--you, Lady Jessica. But I wish to demonstrate a thing: that he does not really want you." "You play with me, Baron?" Piter asked, and he smiled. Seeing that smile, Jessica wondered that the Baron did not leap to defend himself from this Piter. Then she corrected herself. The Baron could not read that smile. He did not have the Training. "In many ways, Piter is quite naive," the Baron said. "He doesn't admit to himself what a deadly creature you are, Lady Jessica. I'd show him, but it'd be a foolish risk." The Baron smiled at Piter, whose face had become a waiting mask. "I know what Piter really wants. Piter wants power." "You promised I could have her," Piter said. The tenor voice had lost some of its cold reserve. Jessica heard the clue-tones in the man's voice, allowed herself an inward shudder. How could the Baron have made such an animal out of a Mentat? "I give you a choice, Piter," the Baron said. "What choice?" The Baron snapped fat fingers. "This woman and exile from the Imperium, or the Duchy of Atreides on Arrakis to rule as you see fit in my name." Jessica watched the Baron's spider eyes study Piter. "You could


hand, my trusty frere', we all joined hands round the table; and when we declared we would 'take a right gude Willie Waught', and hadn't the least idea what it meant, we were really affected. In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty farewell of himself and his amiable wife. Consequently, I was not prepared, at seven o'clock next morning, to receive the following communication, dated half past nine in the evening; a quarter of an hour after I had left him: - 'My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND, 'The die is cast - all is over. Hiding the ravages of care with a sickly mask of mirth, I have not informed you, this evening, that there is no hope of the remittance! Under these circumstances, alike humiliating to endure, humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating to relate, I have discharged the pecuniary liability contracted at this establishment, by giving a note of hand, made payable fourteen days after date, at my residence, Pentonville, London. When it becomes due, it will not be taken up. The result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree must fall. 'Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence - though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical. 'This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever receive 'From 'The 'Beggared Outcast, 'WILKINS MICAWBER.' I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that I ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of taking it on my way to Doctor Strong's, and trying to soothe Mr. Micawber with a word of comfort. But, half-way there, I met the London coach with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber, the very picture of tranquil enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber's conversation, eating walnuts out of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his breast pocket. As they did not see me, I thought it best, all things considered, not to see them. So, with a great weight taken off my mind, I turned into a by-street that was the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole, relieved that they were gone; though I still liked them very much, nevertheless. CHAPTER 18 A RETROSPECT My school-days! The silent gliding on of my existence - the unseen, unfelt progress of my life - from childhood up to youth! Let me think, as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whether there are any marks along its course, by which I can remember how it ran. A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all went together, every Sunday morning,


see Lady Huang,” Grandmother adds. At this, Grandfather pauses and looks sternly at Grandmother. “You know I don’t approve of midwives.” When he turns to me, I know I’m about to be tested. “Tell me why.” I don’t want to answer, because whatever I say will irritate Grandmother. But what else can I do? “There is no place for the Three Aunties and Six Grannies in a gentry family’s home,” I recite, my head down so I don’t have to see Grandmother’s reaction. “And who are they?” he asks. I stare at my slippers, torn between the two people who care for me. A finger lifts my chin. Grandmother says, “Answer your grandfather.” “The Three Aunties are Buddhist nuns, Taoist nuns, and fortune-tellers. The Six Grannies are matchmakers, shamans, drug sellers, brokers, procuresses, and midwives.” I recite the list from memory without knowing what some of those on it are. “Respectable families don’t allow religious women into our homes because we follow Confucian ideals,” Grandfather says. “As for the others, they are snakes and scorpions to be avoided at all costs.” “Husband, you know perfectly well that—” “Beyond this,” Grandfather grumbles, “midwives are linked to wicked deeds like abortion and infanticide. Who hasn’t heard of the sort of midwife who, when confronted by a baby who refuses to leave the child palace, cuts off its arm so she might bring it into the world?” Grandmother shakes her head. “This happens on the rarest occasions and is done only to save a mother’s life—” “Their standing is further lowered,” Grandfather continues, “because they’re often called upon to check a woman’s virginity in court cases and perform corpse inspections in instances of unnatural deaths—” “Husband!” Grandmother snaps. “This is too much for Yunxian to hear.” She turns to me and modulates her voice. “Child, look at me,” she says softly. “Respect your grandfather in all things but know as well that midwives are a necessity. A more pleasing phrase we use for a midwife is she who collects the newborn.” Her eyes glide back to Grandfather. “You do not touch blood. I do not touch blood. We consult from afar. I might attend to a woman in labor—giving her herbs to speed delivery and make the baby slippery—and after birth provide the decoctions that will rebuild her vitality, but I would never try to catch an infant—” “Confucius made clear that any profession in which blood is involved is considered to be beneath us,” Grandfather agrees. “A midwife’s contact with blood places her on the same base level as a butcher. Furthermore, midwives are disreputable. They are too much in the world.” “Perhaps.” Grandmother sighs. “But since we physicians acknowledge blood as corrupt and corrupting, then how can a woman give birth without the aid of a midwife?” “Peasant women—” “Work in the fields all day, have their babies in the corners of their shacks, and then cook dinner for their families,” Grandmother finishes for him. “So—” “So nothing!” Grandmother is starting to lose her temper. “Have you seen that with your own eyes?


controls the present controls the past,"' repeated Winston obediently. '"Who controls the present controls the past,"' said O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?' Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one. O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Winston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?' 'No.' 'Then where does the past exist, if at all?' 'In records. It is written down.' 'In records. And----?' 'In the mind. In human memories.' 'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?' 'But how can you stop people remembering things?' cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. 'It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!' O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial. 'On the contrary,' he said, 'YOU have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (135 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:52 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.' He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in. 'Do you remember,' he went on, 'writing in your diary, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four"?' 'Yes,' said Winston. O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended. 'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'


the island, a full glass near the stove. This was wrong. So wrong. She reached for her phone just as she saw the blood. Thick and red and smeared on the marble of the floor. She froze. “Get out! Get out now!” Jay’s voice was clanging in her ears. “Call the cops!” But what if someone was hurt? From the amount of blood, it seemed that someone had been horribly wounded. “Hamilton Cooke’s a doctor! He can handle it. And if not, his wife will. She’s pretty damned efficient.” Jay’s voice seemed to reverberate through the house. “Call the damned cops, Kristi, and get the hell out. Now!” She took one step toward the door when she heard the moan. Low. Almost unworldly. Emanating from the pantry. Oh. Jesus. Hardly daring to breathe, her weapon now fully drawn, she eased over the bloody marks to the pantry and tipped the door open with the nose of her gun. “Oh, God,” she whispered as the door opened and light spilled into the dark interior. On the floor beneath the shelves of neatly stacked boxes of cereal, rice, oatmeal, and cans of tomato paste and diet cola, were two bodies. Lying almost entwined, blood thick and smeared on the floor and some of the cabinets. Kristi’s stomach clenched as she recognized Reggie Cooke, lying in a thick, red pool of blood. She was staring fixedly, but a gurgling sound passed through her bloody lips and her left hand twitched. Still alive! But not for long. Kristi saw the color fading from Reggie’s face, a curse Kristi had lived with. She could see the life bleed out of a person as they lay dying. “No,” she said. “Hang in there!” But already she was looking at the second body. This time she did wretch, felt bile burn up her throat. She swallowed against the sour taste and stared at Hamilton Cooke, who lay near his wife. He was already dead, his white polo shirt soaked and stained, his tan slacks dark with the blood that had drained from the gaping wounds to his torso and crotch. His eyes were open, his mouth rounded, his face set in an expression of shock. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” Kristi said. Kristi yanked her phone from her pocket and, still holding the gun with one hand, started to plug in 9-1-1 as she knelt beside Reggie. “I’ll get help,” she whispered, knowing in her heart of hearts it was too late for the lawyer. “Stay with me. You just stay with me.” At that moment the door to the pantry swung wide. The operator answered. “9-1-1. What is your emergency?” A shadow stretched suddenly across the interior of the pantry, blocking the light from the kitchen. “Too late!” a deep voice said. Before Kristi could raise her weapon, Aldo Lucerno kicked it hard. Crack! Pain scorched through Kristi’s hand. The gun went flying. It clattered against the glass bins of flour and sugar and fell to the floor. “I wondered if you’d show up here,” Aldo said,


her. She wondered if she had just inadvertently given the promotion to Roman Kitt. {9} One Piece of Armor Her mother was gone that evening. Don’t panic, Iris told herself as she stood in the quiet flat. Over and over, she thought those words. Like a record playing on a phonograph. Aster would be home soon. Occasionally she stayed late at a club, drinking and dancing. But she always returned when the money ran out or the establishment closed at midnight. There was no need to panic. And she had promised Iris that she was going to be better. Perhaps she wasn’t at a club at all but trying to get her old job back at the Revel Diner. Yet the worry remained, pinching Iris’s lungs every time she breathed. She knew how to tamp down the anxious feelings that were boiling within her. It was currently hiding beneath her bed—the typewriter her Nan had once created poetry with. The typewriter Iris had inherited and had since been using to write to This isn’t Forest. She left the front door unlocked for her mother and carried a candle into her room, where she was surprised to find a piece of paper lying on her floor. Her mysterious pen pal had written again, even though she had yet to respond to their myth-filled letter. She was beginning to wonder if they were from another time. Perhaps they had lived in this very room, long before her. Perhaps they were destined to live here, years from now. Perhaps their letters were somehow slipping through a fissure of time, but it was this place that was causing it. Iris retrieved the paper and sat on the edge of her bed, reading: Do you ever feel as if you wear armor, day after day? That when people look at you, they see only the shine of steel that you’ve so carefully encased yourself in? They see what they want to see in you—the warped reflection of their own face, or a piece of the sky, or a shadow cast between buildings. They see all the times you’ve made mistakes, all the times you’ve failed, all the times you’ve hurt them or disappointed them. As if that is all you will ever be in their eyes. How do you change something like that? How do you make your life your own and not feel guilt over it? While she was reading it a second time, soaking in their words and pondering how to respond to something that felt so intimate it could have been whispered from her own mouth, another letter came over the threshold. Iris stood to fetch it, and that was the first time she truly tried to envision who this person was. She tried, but they were nothing more than stars and smoke and words pressed on a page. She knew absolutely nothing about them. But after reading something like this, as if they had bled themselves on the paper … she longed to know more. She opened the second letter, which was a


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

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were Huck's first words when he got in. "Please don't -- I'd be killed, sure -- but the widow's been good friends to me sometimes, and I want to tell -- I will tell if you'll promise you won't ever say it was me." "By George, he has got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!" exclaimed the old man; "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad." Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the hill, and just entering the sumach path on tiptoe, their weapons in their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great bowlder and fell to listening. There was a lagging, anxious silence, and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry. Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the hill as fast as his legs could carry him. --------------------------------------------------------- -270- Chapter XXX AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman's door. The inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call came from a window: "Who's there!" Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone: "Please let me in! It's only Huck Finn!" "It's a name that can open this door night or day, lad! -- and welcome!" These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing word had ever been applied in his case before. The door was quickly unlocked, and he entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves. "Now, my boy, I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too -- make yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you'd turn up and stop here last night." --------------------------------------------------------- -271- "I was awful scared," said Huck, "and I run. I took out when the pistols went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now becuz I wanted to know about it, you know; and I come before daylight becuz I didn't want to run across them devils, even if they was dead." "Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it -- but there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they ain't dead, lad -- we are sorry enough for that. You see we knew right where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along on tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of them -- dark as a cellar that sumach path was -- and just then I found I was going to sneeze. It was the meanest kind of luck! I tried to keep it back, but no