New York servants and partly drawn from the local African supply. "The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home; otherwise he would be so wretched that the climate would not do him any good," she explained, winter after winter, to the sympathising Philadelphians and Baltimoreans; and Mr. Welland, beaming across a breakfast table miraculously supplied with the most varied delicacies, was presently saying to Archer: "You see, my dear fellow, we camp--we literally camp. I tell my wife and May that I want to teach them how to rough it." Mr. and Mrs. Welland had been as much surprised as their daughter by the young man's sudden arrival; but it had occurred to him to explain that he had felt himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed to Mr. Welland an all-sufficient reason for abandoning any duty. "You can't be too careful, especially toward spring," he said, heaping his plate with straw-coloured griddle- cakes and drowning them in golden syrup. "If I'd only been as prudent at your age May would have been dancing at the Assemblies now, instead of spending her winters in a wilderness with an old invalid." "Oh, but I love it here, Papa; you know I do. If only Newland could stay I should like it a thousand times better than New York." "Newland must stay till he has quite thrown off his cold," said Mrs. Welland indulgently; and the young man laughed, and said he supposed there was such a thing as one's profession. He managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams with the firm, to make his cold last a week; and it shed an ironic light on the situation to know that Mr. Letterblair's indulgence was partly due to the satisfactory way in which his brilliant young junior partner had settled the troublesome matter of the Olenski divorce. Mr. Letterblair had let Mrs. Welland know that Mr. Archer had "rendered an invaluable service" to the whole family, and that old Mrs. Manson Mingott had been particularly pleased; and one day when May had gone for a drive with her father in the only vehicle the place produced Mrs. Welland took occasion to touch on a topic which she always avoided in her daughter's presence. "I'm afraid Ellen's ideas are not at all like ours. She was barely eighteen when Medora Manson took her back to Europe--you remember the excitement when she appeared in black at her coming-out ball? Another of Medora's fads--really this time it was almost prophetic! That must have been at least twelve years ago; and since then Ellen has never been to America. No wonder she is completely Europeanised." "But European society is not given to divorce: Countess Olenska thought she would be conforming to American ideas in asking for her freedom." It was the first time that the young man had pronounced her name since he had left Skuytercliff, and he felt the colour rise to his cheek. Mrs. Welland smiled compassionately. "That is just like the extraordinary things that foreigners


It looked heavy. It also looked magical. The more we stared, the brighter

it got—was that possible? And the glow was seemingly internal. The jewels

did their part, but the crown seemed to possess some inner energy source,

something beyond the sum of its parts, its jeweled band, its golden fleurs-

de-lis, its crisscrossing arches and gleaming cross. And of course its ermine

base. You couldn’t help but feel that a ghost, encountered late at night inside

the Tower, might have a similar glow. I moved my eyes slowly,

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appreciatively, from the bottom to the top. The crown was a wonder, a

transcendent and evocative piece of art, not unlike the poppies, but all I

could think in that moment was how tragic that it should remain locked up

in this Tower.

Yet another prisoner.

Seems a waste, I said to Willy and Kate, to which, I recall, they said

nothing.

Maybe they were looking at that band of ermine, remembering my

wedding remarks.

Maybe not.

76.

A WEEKS LATER, after more than a year of talking and planning,

thinking and worrying, seven thousand fans packed into the Queen

Elizabeth Olympic Park for the opening ceremony. The Invictus Games

were born.

It had been decided that the International Warrior Games was a tongue

twister, a mouthful. A clever Royal Marine had then come up with this far

better alternative.

As soon as he suggested it we all said: Of course! After the William

Ernest Henley poem!

Every Brit knew that poem. Many had the first line by heart.

Out of the night that covers me...

And what schoolboy or schoolgirl didn’t encounter at least once those

sonorous final lines?

I am the master of my fate,

Iam the captain of my soul.

Minutes before my speech at


he's right stove up. He's too old to do things like that and I told him so. Soon as I can get my hands clean and when Stephanie Crawford's not looking, I'll make him a Lane cake. That Stephanie's been after my recipe for thirty years, and if she thinks I'll give it to her just because I'm staying with her she's got another think coming." I reflected that if Miss Maudie broke down and gave it to her, Miss Stephanie couldn't follow it anyway. Miss Maudie had once let me see it: among other things, the recipe called for one large cup of sugar. It was a still day. The air was so cold and clear we heard the courthouse clock clank, rattle and strain before it struck the hour. Miss Maudie's nose was a color I had never seen before, and I inquired about it. "I've been out here since six o'clock," she said. "Should be frozen by now." She held up her hands. A network of tiny lines crisscrossed her palms, brown with dirt and dried blood. "You've ruined 'em," said Jem. "Why don't you get a colored man?" There was no note of sacrifice in his voice when he added, "Or Scout'n'me, we can help you." Miss Maudie said, "Thank you sir, but you've got a job of your own over there." She pointed to our yard. "You mean the Morphodite?" I asked. "Shoot, we can rake him up in a jiffy." Miss Maudie stared down at me, her lips moving silently. Suddenly she put her hands to her head and whooped. When we left her, she was still chuckling. Jem said he didn't know what was the matter with her- that was just Miss Maudie. 9 "You can just take that back, boy!" This order, given by me to Cecil Jacobs, was the beginning of a rather thin time for Jem and me. My fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly. Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fighting any more; I was far too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in, the better off everybody would be. I soon forgot. Cecil Jacobs made me forget. He had announced in the schoolyard the day before that Scout Finch's daddy defended niggers. I denied it, but told Jem. "What'd he mean sayin' that?" I asked. "Nothing," Jem said. "Ask Atticus, he'll tell you." "Do you defend niggers, Atticus?" I asked him that evening. "Of course I do. Don't say nigger, Scout. That's common." "'s what everybody at school says." "From now on it'll be everybody less one-" "Well if you don't want me to grow up talkin' that way, why do you send me to school?" My father looked at me mildly, amusement in his eyes. Despite our compromise, my campaign to avoid school had continued in one form or another since my first day's dose of it: the beginning of last September had brought on sinking spells,


show.” “Baby, you’re not disgusting,” Annabel said. “That’s not what it’s about,” I said. “You know Elliot and Nicola? And Imogen and Josh? The sketch is, kind of, uh, celebrating that trend. And I’m sure you’re super busy, but I think it would be really funny and the audience would love it if you were up for a cameo.” “Baby, turn the phone around,” Annabel said, and when Danny did, she said, “Baby, do you want me to do it?” “I don’t care.” “Would I have to wear prosthetics? Because the glue for that woodchuck nose gave me a rash for literally two weeks.” “You don’t have to wear prosthetics. You can just, like, share your Annabel splendor with the world.” Danny had turned the phone back toward me, and from behind it, he shook his head, presumably at my obsequiousness. “Can I think about it?” Annabel said. “And I need to talk to Veronica.” As with not knowing who Farren was, I also didn’t know who Veronica was, but I imagined an agent or manager. “Of course,” I said. “And we can connect your team with Autumn DiCanio and her team if you have any special requests. You could skip rehearsals tomorrow, but, ideally, you’d get here by Saturday midafternoon. I’m sure you remember the schedule.” “Oh, shit, my eyebrow guy is here,” she said. “Thanks so much for considering this,” I said as Danny ended the call. “ ‘Sharing your Annabel splendor,’ ” he repeated. “Chuckles, you’re a world-class kiss-ass.” I shrugged. “Isn’t the reason you’re marrying her that you think she’s splendid?” Friday, 11:03 a.m. From the minute I entered the studio to rehearse the Cheesemonger sketch, which was about to happen on Stage 4, I was gripped by an agitation that may have been predictable, that was certainly misplaced, and that I hadn’t experienced for many years: I was completely preoccupied with Noah Brewster. When I saw him from behind as I walked toward the stage—he again wore a light T-shirt and black jeans—I felt a stomach-churning, pulse-quickening swooniness that I was so unaccustomed to I almost didn’t recognize it. But I did recognize it, just barely. It was the kind of attraction I’d felt in middle and high school, a full-body, brain-dominating excited terror. Naturally, I pretended that nothing irregular was happening. I nodded curtly at Noah when he turned in my direction, and then in a businesslike tone, I said, “Hi, everyone. Hope you’re all feeling cheesy-tastic.” In addition to Noah, there were four cast members—the customers were played by Henrietta, Viv, Bailey, and, as an addition during rewrites, Wes—and three times that many crew members. Autumn DiCanio and her assistant Madison had also shown up. As with other sketches, there was a rudimentary set in place, a gesture at what would exist by the following night. I as the writer was also the producer (one of the distinct privileges of TNO), while the sketch director was a guy named Rick, and the production manager was Bob O’Leary. Bob led the blocking, figuring out who went


your turn, for all the houses your husband burned and the people he hurt without thinking. . The house did not reply. He hid the books in the kitchen and moved from the house again to the alley and looked back and the house was still dark and quiet, sleeping. On his way across town, with the helicopters fluttering like torn bits of paper in the sky, he phoned the alarm at a lonely phone booth outside a store that was closed for the night. Then he stood in the cold night air, waiting and at a distance he heard the fire sirens start up and run, and the Salamanders coming, coming to bum Mr. Black's house while he was away at work, to make his wife stand shivering in the morning air while the roof let go and dropped in upon the fire. But now, she was still asleep. Good night, Mrs. Black, he thought. - "Faber! " Another rap, a whisper, and a long waiting. Then, after a minute, a small light flickered inside Faber's small house. After another pause, the back door opened. They stood looking at each other in the half-light, Faber and Montag, as if each did not believe in the other's existence. Then Faber moved and put out his hand and grabbed Montag and moved him in and sat him down and went back and stood in the door, listening. The sirens were wailing off in the morning distance. He came in and shut the door. Montag said, "I've been a fool all down the line. I can't stay long. I'm on my way God knows where." "At least you were a fool about the right things," said Faber. "I thought you were dead. The audio-capsule I gave you--" "Burnt." "I heard the captain talking to you and suddenly there was nothing. I almost came out looking for you." "The captain's dead. He found the audio-capsule, he heard your voice, he was going to trace it. I killed him with the flamethrower." Faber sat down and did not speak for a time. "My God, how did this happen?" said Montag. "It was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know I'm drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive? I can't breathe. There's Beatty dead, and he was my friend once, and there's Millie gone, I thought she was my wife, but now I don't know. And the house all burnt. And my job gone and myself on the run, and I planted a book in a fireman's house on the way. Good Christ, the things I've done in a single week! " "You did what you had to do. It was coming on for a long time." "Yes, I believe that, if there's nothing else I believe. It saved itself up to happen. I could feel it for a long time, I was saving something up, I went around doing one thing and feeling another. God, it was all there. It's a wonder it didn't


the littluns, but my hunters sometimes--talk of a thing, a dark thing, a beast, some sort of animal. I've heard. You thought not, didn't you? Now listen. You don't get big animals on small islands. Only pigs. You only get lions and tigers in big countries like Africa and India--" "And the Zoo--" "I've got the conch. I'm not talking about the fear. I'm talking about the beast. Be frightened if you like. But as for the beast--" Jack paused, cradling the conch, and turned to his hunters with their dirty black caps. "Am I a hunter or am I not?" They nodded, simply. He was a hunter all right. No one doubted that. "Well then--I've been all over this island. By myself. If there were a beast I'd have seen it. Be frightened because you're like that--but there is no beast in the forest." Jack handed back the conch and sat down. The whole assembly applauded him with relief. Then Piggy held out his hand. "I don't agree with all Jack said, but with some. 'Course there isn't a beast in the forest. How could there be? What would a beast eat?" "Pig." "We eat pig." "Piggy!" "I got the conch!" said Piggy indignantly. "Ralph-- they ought to shut up, oughtn't they? You shut up, you littluns! What I mean is that I don't agree about this here fear. Of course there isn't nothing to be afraid of in the forest. Why--I been there myself! You'll be talking about ghosts and such things next. We know what goes on and if there's something wrong, there's someone to put it right." He took off his glasses and blinked at them. The sun had gone as if the light had been turned off. He proceeded to explain. "If you get a pain in your stomach, whether it's a little one or a big one--" "Yours is a big one." "When you done laughing perhaps we can get on with the meeting. And if them littluns climb back on the twister again they'll only fall off in a sec. So they might as well sit on the ground and listen. No. You have doctors for everything, even the inside of your mind. You don't really mean that we got to be frightened all the time of nothing? Life," said Piggy expansively, "is scientific, that's what it is. In a year or two when the war's over they'll be traveling to Mars and back. I know there isn't no beast--not with claws and all that, I mean--but I know there isn't no fear, either." Piggy paused. "Unless--" Ralph moved restlessly. "Unless what?" "Unless we get frightened of people." A sound, half-laugh, half-jeer, rose among the seated boys. Piggy ducked his head and went on hastily. "So let's hear from that littlun who talked about a beast and perhaps we can show him how silly he is." The littluns began to jabber among themselves, then one stood forward. "What's your name?" "Phil." For a littlun he was self-confident, holding out his hands, cradling the conch as


says reasonably. “No, of course not. Look at me, forgetting my manners.” Andy takes a swig from his beer, his lips curling in a smile around the mouth of the bottle. It’s a sunny day and they’re in the part of the stands that isn’t cast into shade by the bulk of the stadium. Nick has already taken off his coat, and now he begins rolling up his sleeves. Andy, of course, looks as cool as a cucumber. He always does. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Andy looking at him, watching as the fabric folds back to reveal Nick’s forearms—too thick, too hairy, and marred by a couple scars. He fights the urge to push his sleeves back down. So what if Andy thinks he’s rough or coarse—plenty of people do. He thinks Andy is spoiled and out of touch. They’re both free to think all kinds of insulting things about one another. Nick doesn’t care. Besides, Nick has a mirror and knows that anyone who looks at him and doesn’t like what they see just has bad taste. What does it matter if Andy has bad taste? He’s wearing boat shoes and linen pants at Yankee Stadium—taste doesn’t get much worse than that. “You know,” Andy says conversationally, “I don’t even care for the ballet.” Nick spins around to face him, and sees Andy with that fifty percent sheepish, fifty percent smug expression he’s never seen on any face other than Andy Fleming’s. “Bullshit.” The entire reason they’re at this godawful stadium watching this godawful team is that Nick won a bet. Andy bet that some reporting Nick did on a fire at the Museum of Modern Art would wind up above the fold on the front page; Nick—trying not to be pleased by this vote of confidence, however delusional, laughed in his face and bet that it wouldn’t. The deal was that if Andy won, then Nick had to go with Andy to the ballet. Otherwise, Andy would go with Nick to a baseball game. The only problem on Nick’s end is that baseball in New York now means only the Yankees. “I picked something I thought you’d hate,” Andy says. Nick feels a slow, reluctant smile spread across his face. “I probably wouldn’t have minded the ballet.” He knows what those male dancers wear. That would have kept his mind occupied for a couple hours, make no mistake, not that Andy needs to know about it. “I’d have probably liked the ballet a hell of a lot more than I’m enjoying this.” “Not a fan?” “Christ, no. I only picked this because I knew you’d hate it. Why do you root for the Red Sox, anyway? I thought you were from New York,” Nick says, as if he hadn’t spent half his life scanning the Herald Tribune for Andy’s mother’s byline right before reading the Chronicle from front to back. “I went to boarding school in New England.” The way Andy says it gently closes a door on that topic, and Nick is the last


Hannah Whitten - The Foxglove King-Orbit (2023).txt

his life would crash down around his ears, that he’d have to rebuild it into something holy in order to survive. “As someone who was maybe one degree removed from being a pirate,” Lore said, “I would like to disabuse anyone of the notion that it’s a great time.” “A better time than being a King, I’d think.” “Doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to start a war.” “It might seem like one if you had the responsibility of being an Arceneaux King hanging over your head,” Gabe murmured to the fire. She gave him an incredulous look. “For someone who clearly dislikes the man, you seem very in tune with how his mind works.” He frowned at that. “I’m just saying I know Bastian well enough to understand that he’d see a war—especially one that seems all but inevitable eventually—as a small price to pay for leaving behind the responsibility his lineage brings him. Holy and otherwise.” Lore scoffed, thinking of the iron bars on the marble floors, what they symbolized. The Arceneaux family’s divine right to rule came with the caveat that they’d have to control the Mortem leaking from Nyxara’s body. Establishing the Church and Citadel on top of Nyxara’s tomb kept Mortem contained, mostly, but according to the Tracts, the Arceneaux line could also wield Spiritum, Apollius’s power—the magic of life. But not one Arceneaux had ever actually been able to do it. “Do you believe that part?” she asked. “The Spiritum bit?” Gabe stayed quiet for a moment, thinking. “I believe that the presence of the Arceneaux family in the Citadel is what keeps Mortem from overwhelming the continent.” He spoke slowly, piecing together a tapestry of belief and doubt. “That’s just history; we have records of what it was like before the Citadel was built, before Gerard Arceneaux made it the seat of his power.” “But there’s no records of him actually using Spiritum, like it says in the Tracts.” “It’s possible that was a misinterpretation. It’s happened before.” He looked her way. “Did your parents ever scare you with tales of the Night Witch?” Her throat went dry. “The mad priestess?” She said it like a question, like she wasn’t sure if she had it right. Like that story wasn’t an indelible part of her history. “Exactly.” Gabe shifted on the couch, scratching at his eye patch. “The Night Witch was just a priestess, leader of the Buried Watch, a holy order tasked with guarding the Buried Goddess’s tomb and monitoring how much Mortem leaked out. They were a sister sect of the Presque Mort, actually, another group of Church-sanctioned channelers, though after the Citadel was built and Gerard Arceneaux crowned, that requirement was waived. By the time the Night Witch came around, she was the only channeler in the Watch.” Lore made herself nod along. Gabe continued. “Eventually, she went mad and tried to open the tomb. She claimed she was the goddess reborn, because she’d misinterpreted some Tract in the Book of Holy Law. It’s been stricken from the Compendium since.” He


didn’t know. I slid the buttons to the side and popped open the latches with a soft click. I lifted the lid. Inside, there were several loose papers, a few charging cords, and the corners of cash peeking out from beneath it all. What I wanted was on top. A newspaper clipping yellowed with age, and a hardback book with a sparse white cover. I pulled them out and closed the lid, snapping the latches shut. I walked back over and told my fellow traveler what they were. She asked if I was sure about it. I said I was, and she smiled. I placed the only copy of the newspaper clipping that I had into the fire pit and watched it curl up and disappear within seconds. The second item took longer. I set it on top of the pyre, and for a moment it didn’t catch. A thin circle of flame lazily enveloped the cover. Like the border of a closing wound, it shrank toward the center until the words were gone. The blaze caught hold of the spine and consumed the book from within, causing the pages to flutter in the heat like butterflies. They fell away in charred flakes. “Nobody ever tells you that books burn so pretty,” she said. The remaining pages became fire, and after a while, the last wooden support collapsed into the heap. Briefly, the embers blended with the stars as they drifted into the night sky. A NOTE ON SOURCES The anecdotes and analysis contained in this book are based on interviews with dozens of current and former U.S. government officials, personal recollections, contemporaneous notes, emails and text messages, public records, and other sources. Where notes or records did not exist for a particular conversation, I have reconstructed the exchange to the very best of my recollection and/or in consultation with subjects who were involved in or aware of those conversations. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Miles Taylor is a national security expert who works in Washington, D.C. Taylor previously served as chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he published an “Anonymous” essay in The New York Times, blowing the whistle on presidential misconduct. He later published the #1 national bestseller A Warning (2019), revealed himself to be the author, and launched a campaign of ex-officials to oppose Donald Trump’s re-election. He has worked as an advisor in the George W. Bush administration, on Capitol Hill, and as a CNN contributor, and he is cofounder of a D.C.-based charter school and of several democracy-reform groups. Taylor received his M.Phil. in international relations from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and B.A. from Indiana University as a Truman Scholar. SimonandSchuster.com www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Miles-Taylor @AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks Also by Miles Taylor (as Anonymous) A WARNING We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook. Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and


now, but with the same androgynous haircut, the same tall, bony frame. She still dressed as if she might head off at any moment to hike the mountains. She said, “We were always so worried about her, especially at the end there. There are those students you just worry about. And look at her, turning out so successful, so put-together.” I was glad to be on Brigitte’s eye level rather than hers. The dog licked my face, and I marveled at the little pocket her wrinkles made between her eyes. You could stash a spare piece of kibble in there. We walked toward campus, the two of them discussing the lawsuit in the paper, the details of which I couldn’t grasp. Petra said to me, “Granby is always being sued. So is every other school in the country.” “For what?” “Oh God,” Madame Mancio said, “anything. Mostly it’s families threatening to sue. Suspensions, grades, negligence, the kid didn’t get into the right college, a coach didn’t put the kid on varsity. I wish I were kidding. All those lawyers the school pays? They’re busy.” I said, “I didn’t know.” Beneath the bridge, the Tigerwhip was surely frozen solid under its blanket of snow. I could see boot prints heading down the ravine slope and across the flat surface that was, now, only a suggestion of water. (We’d sat on those slopes during junior year bio, Ms. Ramos making us each sketch ten plants. I wore a sweater long enough to hide my backside, and it got ruined in the dirt.) Fifteen miles away, where the creek emptied into the Connecticut River, the ice would be looser, chunkier, yielding to slush and running water. “Has the campus changed much?” Petra asked me. Madame Mancio, whom I ought to be thinking of as Priscilla if I were to have any chance of a normal conversation with her, said, “Not as much as Bodie! I remember when I saw your picture on that cover. I thought, my God, she’s gone and done something! I don’t remember everyone that well, but I had you all four years, didn’t I?” I nodded, although it wasn’t true; I’d had Mr. Granson freshman year. Then she said, with sudden urgency: “Who’s watching your kids while you’re away?” As if I might have overlooked this detail. “Their father.” “Oh, good. They must miss you so much!” Brigitte panted casually, and I got the impression this was a dog who never retracted her tongue. When Lance and I toured for Starlet Fever, people would often ask me where my children were, how they felt about my absence, how my husband felt about it—but they never asked Lance, who had three kids. We stepped onto Lower Campus, onto the quad path, its snow packed down to gray ice. Priscilla said, “Now, who are you still in touch with?” “More faculty than students. Mostly through Facebook.” “Oh, Facebook, pffft.” Priscilla dismissed it with the hand that wasn’t holding the leash. “I believe in phone calls and letters. I’m out there every reunion weekend.


robbery. So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs Dignam he was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the funeral and to tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said that there was never a truer, a finer than poor little Willy that's dead to tell her. Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom's hand doing the tragic to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You're a rogue and I'm another. --Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as I hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to request of you this favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness. --No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which actuate your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to me consoled by the reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of your confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness of the cup. --Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of speech. And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five o'clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby, 14A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion, and he serving mass in Adam and Eve's when he was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new testament, and the old testament, and hugging and smugging. And the two shawls killed with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one another. HOW IS YOUR TESTAMENT? HAVE YOU GOT AN OLD TESTAMENT? Only Paddy was passing there, I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel with her patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady. Jack Mooney's sister. And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told him if he didn't patch up the pot, Jesus, he'd kick the shite out of him. So Terry brought the three pints. --Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen. --SLAN LEAT, says he. --Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen. Gob, he had his mouth half


our guest. four-penny piece, and repeat his orders to look out for “the He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung seafaring man with one leg.” round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely evening he sat in a corner of the parlour next the fire and tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four drank rum and water very strong. Mostly he would not speak corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and blow up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut came about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind when he came back from his stroll he would ask if any seafar- of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in ing men had gone by along the road. At first we thought it the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue was the want of company of his own kind that made him ask me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. And this question, but at last we began to see he was desirous to altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, avoid them. When a seaman did put up at the Admiral in the shape of these abominable fancies. Contents Benbow (as now and then some did, making by the coast But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring road for Bristol) he would look in at him through the cur- man with one leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 6 7 than anybody else who knew him. There were nights when he shivering to their beds; but I really believe his presence did us took a deal more rum and water than his head would carry; good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked, old, back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would country life, and there was even a party of the younger men call for glasses round and force all the trembling company to who pretended to admire him, calling him a “true sea-dog” listen to his stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I and a “real old salt” and such like names, and saying there was have heard the house shaking with “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of the sort of man that made England terrible at sea. rum,” all the neighbours joining in for dear life, with the


She pulled the door behind her and stepped outside. ‘You’ll get cold,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I have a feeling this conversation won’t take very long.’ I looked up at her. She was always more intuitive than me. She was the smartest woman I’d ever met. There was no point trying to find the ‘right’ words because they simply did not exist. ‘You’re an amazing woman—’ ‘Oh God.’ ‘What?’ ‘Anything but the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech. It’s humiliating, Henry.’ ‘But it’s true! It’s me, I’m the problem.’ ‘I know that. So why are you leaving me?’ Fuck. This was why people lied. It’s far easier to lie to someone than to watch them bear the hurt of your careless words. ‘Because I thought I knew what love was. I thought it was something I could … manage. You and I, we knew how to rub along together. We had a good partnership. But if you’re honest I know you’ll think the same thing. We weren’t’—I searched the sky for inspiration—‘fireworks.’ ‘Wow.’ She wiped a stray tear from her eye. ‘You must have had your doubts too, Issy.’ Stupidly, I thought she would agree with me. ‘Don’t expect me to make this easier for you, Henry. You see the thing is, I do love you. Very much, as it happens. And I thought we had fireworks.’ I felt ten stone heavier. Her arms were folded tightly around her. What could I say to make it better? ‘I’m so sorry, Isabelle. I truly am. I never wanted to hurt you.’ She said nothing; wouldn’t even meet my eyes. ‘I feel terrible,’ I said. ‘You feel terrible? Try being dumped on the doorstep by your fiancée before we even had a chance to pick out a ring! This must be some kind of record.’ Nothing I said was coming out right. ‘You’re better off without me.’ ‘Finally, something we can agree on.’ With that, she walked back inside and slammed the door in my face. I buried my face in my hands and hardly noticed when the door opened again. ‘And here is all your shit,’ she said, handing me a black plastic bag. ‘I hope she’s worth it.’ The door slammed again. It was late by the time I returned home. There was scaffolding on the house next door, which, in the evening sunlight, made it look as though it were trapped in a gilded cage. I walked up our driveway and noticed an e-bike parked where my mother’s old VW Golf used to be. I turned my key in the door and was hit by the welcome scent of a roast chicken giving me an appetite for food that I thought I would never have again. Not after talking to Isabelle. I never felt more unsure of who I was, and that was saying something – for a man who lived his entire life in the shadow of other people’s opinions. I felt empty. ‘Henry!’ my mother exclaimed from the kitchen, rushing into the hallway. She held me in a


its first distortions from Miss Havisham's wasting hands. In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end, had been accomplished; and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me. Chapter 39 I was three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word had I heard to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my twenty-third birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnard's Inn more than a year, and lived in the Temple. Our chambers were in Garden-court, down by the river. Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our original relations, though we continued on the best terms. Notwithstanding my inability to settle to anything - which I hope arose out of the restless and incomplete tenure on which I held my means - I had a taste for reading, and read regularly so many hours a day. That matter of Herbert's was still progressing, and everything with me was as I have brought it down to the close of the last preceding chapter. Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. I was alone, and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious, long hoping that to-morrow or next week would clear my way, and long disappointed, I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response of my friend. It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts, that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs; and in the country, trees had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away; and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all. Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple since that time, and it has not now so lonely


been riding for a day already and hopes to reach King Echemus’s palace before dusk falls tomorrow. When the sun sets, crowning the hills with gold, she stops near some stones that might once have been a temple. The blocks have grown darker, and weeds have found their way through each crack. She ties the horse to a tree and walks in the growing darkness, following the feeble sound of water. She finds a stream hidden by tall grass and flowers and bends to fill her empty wineskin to the brim. A rabbit hops a few steps from her. She looks up and their eyes lock. How small it is, she thinks, and yet it isn’t scared of her. Her hand finds the handle of her dagger and throws it. It sinks into the soft fur around the animal’s neck. She grabs it, limp and dead, and walks back to the old temple to clean it. Her horse rests while she prepares a small fire and eats the meat. Sparks glow around her like fireflies. The wind rises, and she wraps her goatskin around her shoulders. Though summer, it is always cool at night in the hills. She lies down by the fire and closes her eyes, but nightmares are already forming behind the lids, black figures dancing in the flames. They have been following her for years. She imagines fighting them, putting her hand right into the flames until her skin becomes scorched and the figures disappear. But no one can fight fire. It is the element of the Furies, goddesses of vengeance, ancient creatures of torment. So she thinks of her children—Iphigenia, Electra, Orestes, Chrysothemis—each of them a root that keeps her steady. Iphigenia, with her swanlike neck and golden hair; Electra, with her solemn eyes and wise words; Chrysothemis, with her sweet smile. Even Orestes, who looks so much like his father, is a joy. Agamemnon can’t take this from her. She has carried them in her womb, nursed them, watched over them at night, their breath in her ear, their little hands fitting in hers. She has clutched her children one by one, shielded them until they have grown, and in return, they have given her her life back. Stars dance in the vaulted sky, and Clytemnestra drifts to sleep. * * * She arrives at the palace of Alea the next evening. It is much smaller than Mycenae—simple wood facades on a base of rough stone—and around it, sheep and goats graze on the land. At the entrance, standing by two tall columns painted crimson, Timandra is waiting for her. Her features seem different, more refined under her regal circlet, but maybe it is just because, for once, her hair isn’t in her face. She is wearing a light-blue tunic pinned to her left shoulder, and Clytemnestra can’t help but notice an ugly scar at the base of her neck, dark and jagged. “That was our father,” Timandra says, following Clytemnestra’s eyes. “One of his many courtesies before he died.” “Don’t talk badly of the dead.” She


Mrs. Grey?” He nuzzles my hair again, amused. “No! Never . . . I’m just very comfortable on your lap. I like hearing about your business.” “You do?” He sounds surprised. “Of course.” I lean back to gaze directly at him. “I like hearing any bit of in- formation you deign to share with me.” I smirk, and he regards me with amuse- ment and shakes his head. “Always hungry for more information, Mrs. Grey.” “Tell me.” I urge him as I snuggle up against his chest again. “Tell you what?” “Why you do it.” “Do what?” “Work the way you do.” “A guy’s got to earn a living.” He’s amused. “Christian, you earn more than a living.” My voice is full of irony. He frowns and is quiet for a moment. I think he’s not going to divulge any secrets, but he surprises me. “I don’t want to be poor,” he says, his voice low. “I’ve done that. I’m not go- ing back there again. Besides . . . it’s a game,” he murmurs. “It’s about winning. A game I’ve always found very easy.” “Unlike life,” I murmur to myself. Then I realize I said the words out loud. “Yes, I suppose.” He frowns. “Though it’s easier with you.” Easier with me? I hug him tightly. “It can’t all be a game. You’re very philanthropic.” 364/551 He shrugs, and I know he’s growing uncomfortable. “About some things, maybe,” he says quietly. “I love philanthropic Christian,” I murmur. “Just him?” “Oh, I love megalomaniac Christian, too, and control-freak Christian, sex- pertise Christian, kinky Christian, romantic Christian, shy Christian . . . the list is endless.” “That’s a whole lot of Christians.” “I’d say at least fifty.” He laughs. “Fifty Shades,” he murmurs into my hair. “My Fifty Shades.” He shifts, tipping my head back, and kisses me. “Well, Mrs. Shades, let’s see how your dad is doing.” “Okay.” “Can we go for a drive?” Christian and I are back in the R8, and I’m feeling giddily buoyant. Ray’s brain is back to normal—all swelling gone. Dr. Sluder has decided to wake him from his coma tomorrow. She says she’s pleased with his progress. “Sure.” Christian grins at me. “It’s your birthday—we can do anything you want.” Oh! His tone makes me turn and gaze at him. His eyes are dark. “Anything?” “Anything.” How much promise can he load into one word? “Well, I want to drive.” “Then drive, baby.” He grins, and I grin back. My car handles like a dream, and as we hit the I-5, I subtly put my foot down, forcing us both back in our seats. “Steady, baby,” Christian warns. As we drive back into Portland, an idea occurs to me. 365/551 “Have you planned lunch?” I ask Christian tentatively. “No. You’re hungry?” He sounds hopeful. “Yes.” “Where do you want to go? It’s your day, Ana.” “I know just the place.” I pull up near the gallery where José exhibited his work and park right out- side the Le Picotin restaurant where we went after José’s show.


Fourth in line. Not first as usual or even second. Fourth o, fourth. Hian. She flipped through her jotter until she got to the section where she wrote new words she had recently come across. She dragged a finger across the page and stopped at “travesty.” There was a colon after the word, but it was not followed by a meaning yet. She needed a dictionary. Oxford Advanced Learner’s or Longman. It was the first item on the list of books she’d given her father after passing the common entrance exam, but her parents did not buy even an ordinary pocket dictionary, and she was almost halfway through her second term in secondary school now. She turned a page in the jotter. Even if she could not remember exactly what the word meant, it was, sha, still a travesty that she would be the fourth to read Death Is a Woman. After Kànmí, Mojeed and now Sunday. And all because she hadn’t paid her school fees and had decided to hide in the forest until Mr. Bísádé left for the senior school. Bùsọ́lá and Tèmi had been classmates since they were in primary school and were even seatmates from primary three to five. They should have been best friends by now, but when Zainab asked Tèmi who her bestie was while they walked back to their class from morning assembly last week, Tèmi had glared at Bùsọ́lá before saying, Jesus. Tèmi was a liar and a cheat who sometimes elbowed Bùsọ́lá for no reason at all, but none of that mattered, because Tèmi’s father sold secondhand books to students at the College of Education and she owned a lot of storybooks and novels as a result. You name it, Ladybird books, Enid Blytons, Pacesetters series, abridged Dickens, African writers’ series. Tèmi even claimed there was a stash of Mills & Boon she had read but would only start bringing to school once they were in senior secondary, but that was probably a lie. Bùsọ́lá knew that Tèmi did not enjoy books. She was the one who had read Ladybird Tales out loud to Tèmi so she would be able to narrate the stories to her parents and prove she was indeed reading the books her father kept giving her. Ever since they were in primary school, Tèmi showed up with a new secondhand book every other Monday. Right after morning assembly, she would wave it in the air while interested classmates rushed to her desk. Congregants answering a call to worship. Bùsọ́lá was always the first to pick a reading slot. She usually walked back from morning assembly with Tèmi and would wait by her friend’s desk while she opened her schoolbag to bring out the book. A good friend would have reserved Bùsọ́lá’s slot even though she skipped morning assembly today. A good friend would have held on to Death Is a Woman until Bùsọ́lá sneaked back into class. Especially since it was a Pacesetter book that everyone would want to read. No one had been so interested in The Beautyful


cried, then left, laughing, with his friend Pirithous. But what would the point of telling be? They would not believe me. They won’t give me their pity. They want me to be their scapegoat. So be it. I have come to hate Paris. He doesn’t defend me from the gossip, from the spiteful words of his family. And he doesn’t fight. This is his war too, yet all he does is train with his bow. When he is done, he comes back to our quarters to make love to me. But it is not the same as before. Sometimes at night, when he falls asleep, I watch him and think about murdering him, crushing some drug into his cup. I have a few in my quarters—they come from Egypt. They banish pain and sorrow if taken in small quantities, but if you exceed, they kill you. So I put them in his cup, mix the wine, but then I always find myself throwing it away. Paris is the reason I left everything behind. I used to love him with all my heart. Who has bewitched whom? I think about you a lot. At least I know that Agamemnon is away from you, fighting under this city’s gates. So is Menelaus. Maybe they will die in the war, maybe not. I spend my days looking at the soldiers cutting each other down on the battlefield, their blood spilling into the shape of anemones, and I wonder, What are you doing, Sister? What are you thinking about? Are you happy? Your Helen 25 Different Kinds of Wars Nine years later IT HAS BEEN nine years since her daughter died. Nine years to the day. The world has changed, the seasons slipping past her. Flowers blossoming, leaves falling, stars floating. The land has grown dark and fertile, then burned and yellow again. Clouds have come and gone, like sheep in a meadow. Rains have fallen. She has watched the world shift around her while her heart stayed the same, bleeding hatred. She often thinks of what her mother said all those years ago. Hate is a bad root. It takes its place in your heart and it grows and grows, letting everything rot. It is sunset in the garden, the sky orange as if on fire. The temple of Hera looks pale in the burning light, the columns like bones. She walks by the trees and sits on the grass at the edge of the citadel, listening to the deafening silence. It swallows her, keeping her safe from the world. She comes here every evening. When the sunlight is gone, she wears her grief like a sling across her chest and allows herself to remember. She remembers her daughter when she came into the world, a fragile lump of mucus and flesh. Iphigenia had held up her little hands and smiled at her. This is my chance, Clytemnestra thought, my chance of a new life. Iphigenia cradling a newborn Electra in her arms. “Why is she so serious, Mother?” she had asked, her eyes wide


him, his employment positively sickened me. He was lying on his belly on the floor licking up, like a dog, the blood which had fallen from my wounded wrist. He was easily secured, and to my surprise, went with the attendants quite placidly, simply repeating over and over again, "The blood is the life! The blood is the life!" I cannot afford to lose blood just at present. I have lost too much of late for my physical good, and then the prolonged strain of Lucy's illness and its horrible phases is telling on me. I am over excited and weary, and I need rest, rest, rest. Happily Van Helsing has not summoned me, so I need not forego my sleep. Tonight I could not well do without it. TELEGRAM, VAN HELSING, ANTWERP, TO SEWARD, CARFAX (Sent to Carfax, Sussex, as no county given, delivered late by twenty-two hours.) 17 September.--Do not fail to be at Hilllingham tonight. If not watching all the time, frequently visit and see that flowers are as placed, very important, do not fail. Shall be with you as soon as possible after arrival. DR. SEWARD'S DIARY 18 September.--Just off train to London. The arrival of Van Helsing's telegram filled me with dismay. A whole night lost, and I know by bitter experience what may happen in a night. Of course it is possible that all may be well, but what may have happened? Surely there is some horrible doom hanging over us that every possible accident should thwart us in all we try to do. I shall take this cylinder with me, and then I can complete my entry on Lucy's phonograph. MEMORANDUM LEFT BY LUCY WESTENRA 17 September, Night.--I write this and leave it to be seen, so that no one may by any chance get into trouble through me. This is an exact record of what took place tonight. I feel I am dying of weakness, and have barely strength to write, but it must be done if I die in the doing. I went to bed as usual, taking care that the flowers were placed as Dr. Van Helsing directed, and soon fell asleep. I was waked by the flapping at the window, which had begun after that sleep-walking on the cliff at Whitby when Mina saved me, and which now I know so well. I was not afraid, but I did wish that Dr. Seward was in the next room, as Dr. Van Helsing said he would be, so that I might have called him. I tried to sleep, but I could not. Then there came to me the old fear of sleep, and I determined to keep awake. Perversely sleep would try to come then when I did not want it. So, as I feared to be alone, I opened my door and called out. "Is there anybody there?" There was no answer. I was afraid to wake mother, and so closed my door again. Then outside in the shrubbery I heard a sort of howl like a dog's, but more fierce


for Silas to adopt Eppie because the child came to him unsought--like Dolly, she accepts the mysterious workings of God. But this doesn't bring her peace. Eliot digresses to describe Godfrey's own feelings about adopting Eppie. Since you have seen Silas and Eppie together, you can imagine the effect of this adoption on Silas, but Eliot says Godfrey never worries about this. Why not? He believes that anyone would want Eppie to rise in social class. Some readers think Eliot condemns Godfrey for this attitude, for he's really fulfilling his own desire for his child. Others say he can't help his class prejudices, and they point out that Eliot says that he's no longer as bad as he was in Part One. Back in Nancy's mind, you see she's grateful that Godfrey has been so good to her, in spite of her refusal to adopt a child. Then you go back into Godfrey's mind. He appreciates Nancy's loving attention and understands how important her convictions are to her. But his sense of her firm morals only makes it harder to explain the truth about Eppie. He does love Nancy. But because their marriage is childless, he blames this for his unhappiness. Eliot says this is a common human mistake--life is never entirely happy for anybody, but most people can't accept this. Godfrey aggravates this natural tendency by thinking that he's been denied a child to punish him for his past. Who does he seem to think is punishing him? Nancy rouses herself from her thoughts with a sense, like Dolly's, that she must just live one day at a time. A servant brings in tea and tells her that people have been running up the road away from the village. Nancy looks out the window. You see that it's a beautiful scene, but in her anxiety it looks ominous to her. ^^^^^^^^^^ SILAS MARNER: CHAPTER 18 The next chapter is swift and dramatic, as a sudden turn of events draws the story to its climax. Godfrey walks into the room, pale and trembling, and Nancy's relief turns to apprehension. Although he's upset, Godfrey tries to break his news kindly--that Dunstan's skeleton has been found. NOTE: Dunstan's body has decayed, but he was identified by the objects found with his bones. Godfrey's gold-handled whip lay there, re-creating an image of Dunsey swaggering along the hedgerows. In a way, this represents a part of Godfrey that died along with Dunstan. But along with the whip, other gold objects also survived--Silas' coins. These represent a part of Silas that died. Although this discovery must have an effect on Silas, too, Eliot keeps your attention focused only on Nancy and Godfrey. She enters into both of their thoughts, to show you their differing reactions. Godfrey is in shock, remembering the full implications of Dunstan's death. Nancy, however, is fairly calm, thinking of Dunstan only as the family black sheep. When she learns that Dunstan was a thief, she feels a proper sense of family shame, which she imagines Godfrey feels, too. But something more is bothering


do, but I follow suit, and he does. He says grace. “Lord, our Father, bless this food and our endeavours. We thank you for all that you are, all things that have been and all that is to come. In your hands, O Lord. In your hands.” Doublewide looks up, and a smile lights his face. “Mr. Sounder, I’m proud of you. You see? You can be pleasant after all.” “Don’t tell anyone. That’s even more secret than you are.” “I’m not secret, Mr. Sounder. Just shy.” “Not for nothing, but a cop died today.” “Theirs is a dangerous profession. Laudable, of course, if sometimes locally inconvenient.” “This cop ate his gun. Turns out he was driving a certain vehicle. You saw it when you pulled my fat out of the fire.” “Ah, indeed.” “You have anything to do with his sudden feeling of remorse, Mr. Nugent?” “No, Mr. Sounder, very much not. I should have preferred him discursive. I suspect his death is very much of his own engineering, though of course one always looks to the employer in such a context.” Always, and always assuming that wasn’t Nugent himself, double games hardly being unknown in organised crime. “Did you know Roddy Tebbit?” “You ask a lot of questions for a dinner guest, Mr. Sounder. Please be so kind as to pass the baguette basket.” He can reach the basket, of course. Figure he prefers not to. I pass it along, and Nugent makes a little jazz hands gesture, palms out. “I adore French baking, sir. Adore it.” “Roddy Tebbit, Mr. Nugent. If you don’t mind.” “I knew him a little. We were not friends, but…those of us who are not like the others…well, we meet, inevitably. You conceive that the attempt on your life was related to your investigation.” “I do.” “So do I.” “You turned up at a real convenient moment for me. How’s that happen?” “Good fortune on your part. We were rushing to protect Miss Green.” “And how did you know she needed it?” “Oh, I deduced it, of course. With Mr. Tebbit dead, the possibility is plain.” “Did a bang-up job. She’s worse than me.” “Alas, we may strive for omniscience, but omnipresence is somewhat more problematic.” “I hear Roddy had plans to survey Lake Othrys. Algae or some such.” “Yes, so I gather.” “It crossed my mind maybe you didn’t want that to happen, what with your shyness and all.” Doublewide claps his hands duchess style, wrists close together, pat pat pat with his palms like flippers. “Oh, yes! The lower reaches are said to be a museum of gangsters murdered in the early days. But Mr. Sounder, I assure you, I’ve no bones to pick in that regard. No, indeed, sir. Did Mr. Zoegar not specifically advise you that concrete boots were not on the agenda?” “I took that as a metaphor.” “It was, it was. You need have no personal fear. But as it happens, it is also literally true. The lake and I have no secrets together. Let the waters drain away,


face of discomfort. Despite everything turning out relatively well, there was still a lot of tension between the two of them. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” William said, and he took a step back toward the door. Simon was tempted to let him go, but he swallowed his pride and shook his head. “Stay,” he said, shutting his book. “I can’t focus anyway.” “I came to get a book of poetry for Martine,” William explained as he drew deeper into the room. “She says it helps with her English, but I think she just really likes poetry.” Cringing, Simon debated opening up this particular topic, but he knew they would need to talk about it eventually. “About your wife . . .” William sighed. “I know you think poorly of me.” “I didn’t say that.” “You didn’t have to. It’s written all over your face.” This was going to be harder than he thought, but Simon was determined to really talk to his brother. It had been too long since he had. “Will you sit?” William eyed him warily but did as requested. When he moved stiffly, wincing and touching a hand to his rib cage, Simon suddenly remembered what the physician had told him days ago. “We need to talk about how you were wounded.” Paling, William glanced at the slightly open door before he spoke. “I hoped you would forget about that.” “You were nearly on your deathbed. Of course I wasn’t going to forget about it. What happened?” William was clearly reluctant to elaborate, glancing at the door again, as if considering the value of leaving before he got himself into more trouble, but then he sighed. “Marrying a girl without her father’s permission can stir some . . . unwelcome feelings. When we returned from Scotland, he wasn’t pleased.” Simon gritted his teeth. “Will, you idiot.” “I was smitten.” There was no point in trying to convince William he had made a mistake in getting married. The deed was already done. Simon would just have to move on and hope his brother did right by the girl. “Tell me about her.” “About Martine?” William’s eyebrows rose high, as if this was the last thing he had expected. And when Simon said nothing, he took a slow breath. “Oh. Well. She’s French.” “I know that part.” “And beautiful.” Simon knew that, too, but he wouldn’t admit that out loud. Just in case. Lucy had been sleeping late this morning, but there was always the chance she would appear and hear something she could misconstrue. William’s wife was far from homely, but no one would ever compare to Lucy. “She . . .” William waved a hand around. “There’s just something about her, isn’t there?” Simon had never heard anything more ridiculous in his life, and he had to fight a grin. “Do you know anything about your wife, Will?” “Of course I do!” But he didn’t exactly speak with confidence. “She is a divine dancer. And she . . . er . . . speaks two languages, possibly three,


it was known all over Highbury. It was the very event to engage those who talk most, the young and the low; and all the youth and servants in the place were soon in the happiness of frightful news. The last night's ball seemed lost in the gipsies. Poor Mr. Woodhouse trembled as he sat, and, as Emma had foreseen, would scarcely be satisfied without their promising never to go beyond the shrubbery again. It was some comfort to him that many inquiries after himself and Miss Woodhouse (for his neighbours knew that he loved to be inquired after), as well as Miss Smith, were coming in during the rest of the day; and he had the pleasure of returning for answer, that they were all very indifferent-- which, though not exactly true, for she was perfectly well, and Harriet not much otherwise, Emma would not interfere with. She had an unhappy state of health in general for the child of such a man, for she hardly knew what indisposition was; and if he did not invent illnesses for her, she could make no figure in a message. The gipsies did not wait for the operations of justice; they took themselves off in a hurry. The young ladies of Highbury might have walked again in safety before their panic began, and the whole history dwindled soon into a matter of little importance but to Emma and her nephews:--in her imagination it maintained its ground, and Henry and John were still asking every day for the story of Harriet and the gipsies, and still tenaciously setting her right if she varied in the slightest particular from the original recital. CHAPTER IV A very few days had passed after this adventure, when Harriet came one morning to Emma with a small parcel in her hand, and after sitting down and hesitating, thus began: "Miss Woodhouse--if you are at leisure--I have something that I should like to tell you--a sort of confession to make--and then, you know, it will be over." Emma was a good deal surprized; but begged her to speak. There was a seriousness in Harriet's manner which prepared her, quite as much as her words, for something more than ordinary. "It is my duty, and I am sure it is my wish," she continued, "to have no reserves with you on this subject. As I am happily quite an altered creature in one respect, it is very fit that you should have the satisfaction of knowing it. I do not want to say more than is necessary--I am too much ashamed of having given way as I have done, and I dare say you understand me." "Yes," said Emma, "I hope I do." "How I could so long a time be fancying myself! . . ." cried Harriet, warmly. "It seems like madness! I can see nothing at all extraordinary in him now.--I do not care whether I meet him or not--except that of the two I had rather not see him-- and indeed I would go any distance round to avoid


has been (mostly unsuccessfully) nominated for fourteen Grammys?! Here is my list of the greatest Dave Matthews songs to swoon over: 1. “If Only” most romantic lyric, to me: “So help me get my way back to you” I do not believe in helping a man, AND YET…When Dave asks this woman I’m sure he dumped with neither cause nor due process to take him back, please—it breaks my cold, dead heart. I cry to this song a distressing amount, as I am interested in sex-weeping, especially because he does this plaintive keening near the end that sounds like he’s crying for his woman to take him back, a position I have never been in but feel like I would deeply enjoy. Regret is such a powerful emotion!!!!! Did he do something fucked-up to this lady? Probably! But that doesn’t matter now because he’s distressed about it and he wants back into her life, which is probably a very bad idea! But the thing about romance is that in general it’s a bad idea, so this is actually fine. 2. “That Girl Is You” most romantic lyric, to me: “Oh, hallelujah” How can you not like a song that uses shakers or maracas or whatever the beginning noise is? This song is about how Dave saw some hot girl on the dance floor and enjoyed the way she moved so fucking much that he went over and introduced himself to her and then wrote a song about how sexy she looks on the dance floor. But because it’s Dave you know this broad is not, like, JLo slithering across a strobe-lit disco, this girl is in a dirty gravel parking lot with her shoes off doing that hands-above-her-head, eyes-closed, “ladies who wear scarves” dance, and Dave is sweating through a multicolored Baja hoodie (a drug rug, come on now) while mirroring her moves, hoping she notices him and comes over to ask if he will share his joint with her. Hallelujah, indeed. 3. “Little Thing” (Live at Luther College two-disc set) most romantic lyric, to me: “Weighted by the memory of / The memory of a love that never got born” </3 Okay, so this is my favorite record, a live recording that’s just Tim Reynolds and Dave and a couple of acoustic guitars playing a bunch of hits in front of a friendly college audience that doesn’t scream out any rude stuff. Dave starts by telling this story about how he saw a hot, very small—but not a child—adult human woman on the street and he asked her for directions, and she gave them to him and left. After she’d gone he was like “DAMN, THAT GIRL WAS FINE,” but it was too late. He couldn’t ask her name or suggest they get a cup of coffee, his chance for romance with this woman he met on some grimy New York City street was dead, and now her voice was going to echo in his ear, tormenting him until he dies or until he sees another hot young elf on a


herself, now smiled at the rapidity and ease with which an affair was finally settled, that had given them so many previous months of suspense and vexation. ``And this,'' said she, ``is the end of all his friend's anxious circumspection! of all his sister's falsehood and contrivance! the happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!'' In a few minutes she was joined by Bingley, whose conference with her father had been short and to the purpose. ``Where is your sister?'' said he hastily, as he opened the door. ``With my mother up stairs. She will be down in a moment, I dare say.'' He then shut the door, and, coming up to her, claimed the good wishes and affection of a sister. Elizabeth honestly and heartily expressed her delight in the prospect of their relationship. They shook hands with great cordiality; and then, till her sister came down, she had to listen to all he had to say of his own happiness, and of Jane's perfections; and in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed all his expectations of felicity to be rationally founded, because they had for basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and himself. It was an evening of no common delight to them all; the satisfaction of Miss Bennet's mind gave a glow of such sweet animation to her face, as made her look handsomer than ever. Kitty simpered and smiled, and hoped her turn was coming soon. Mrs. Bennet could not give her consent or speak her approbation in terms warm enough to satisfy her feelings, though she talked to Bingley of nothing else for half an hour; and when Mr. Bennet joined them at supper, his voice and manner plainly shewed how really happy he was. Not a word, however, passed his lips in allusion to it, till their visitor took his leave for the night; but as soon as he was gone, he turned to his daughter, and said, ``Jane, I congratulate you. You will be a very happy woman.'' Jane went to him instantly, kissed him, and thanked him for his goodness. ``You are a good girl;'' he replied, ``and I have great pleasure in thinking you will be so happily settled. I have not a doubt of your doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed your income.'' ``I hope not so. Imprudence or thoughtlessness in money matters would be unpardonable in _me_.'' ``Exceed their income! My dear Mr. Bennet,'' cried his wife, ``what are you talking of? Why, he has four or five thousand a year, and very likely more.'' Then addressing her daughter, ``Oh! my dear, dear Jane, I am so happy! I am sure I shan't get a wink of sleep all night. I knew how it would be. I always said it must be


got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday- school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull. "Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church." "Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help US -- can't we lick the other crowd then?" "How you going to get them?" "I don't know. How do THEY get them?" "Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superinten- dent over the head with it -- or any other man." "Who makes them tear around so?" "Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it -- and they've got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." "Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat- heads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's more -- if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rub- bing of an old tin lamp." "How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not." "What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I WOULD come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country." "Shucks, it


see a rainbow arching over the peaks. Some hours later, when the overcast sky gave way to a fiery orange-and-rose sunset, one of the best I could ever remember seeing, Mom sighed and squeezed my hand. Quite a send-off. My father never feels closer or farther away than when I return to this place to find him gone. Now I’m walking a dog he never met, wondering if he knows what my mother is facing; what we are going through without him. I turn around, the mountains a reassuring wall at my back, and let Buster lead us home for lunch. 16 On the day after Christmas, I took my mother out to her favorite diner. My husband, kids, and I had flown to Oregon to spend the week with her, and my sister, Cindy, and her family made the trip down from Portland with a carful of Christmas decorations to deck the halls of our Airbnb. My mom didn’t have extra beds or space for guests, and we wanted her to be able to retreat to her own space and have privacy when she needed, so we had rented a house not far from hers. I drove over each morning to pick her up and bring her to the Airbnb and drove her back when she was ready to go to bed. That morning, I’d thrown on some clothes and stopped for doughnuts on the way to her place. While she dug into the sticky pink box, searching for a maple bar, I tidied up her living room and took Buster out to do his business. Mom had slipped and fractured her knee two days before our arrival; she was waiting to see an orthopedic surgeon, making do with a knee brace and a cane. We didn’t yet know that the break was the result of the cancer eating away at her tibia and femur, or that it would prove unmendable—as the surgeon would put it, There’s not enough healthy bone left to repair. We didn’t know that she would never walk unassisted again. We wouldn’t get her latest scan results until after New Year’s, and so we were still able to tell ourselves that we might get what her oncologist called more quality time—a phrase implying that the quality of her time would slowly leech away as her cancer advanced, until it no longer made sense to continue treatment. After I unhooked Buster’s leash and washed my hands at the kitchen sink, I asked Mom what she wanted for lunch. She thought for a moment, then named her wish: a Reuben sandwich from the diner one town over. We set off in the rental car, and I found myself wishing we had farther to go. It was an afternoon of cold, sunlit beauty in the mountains. I was still struggling to put myself back together after falling apart the night before. We all had a surprisingly good Christmas together, with a full house of family and friends. My brother-in-law deep-fried a turkey. My kids had gotten a mini Polaroid camera


he says suddenly turning to gape at me. “What?” “It makes sense now!” His eyes are full of recognizance. “What?” “Baby Bird. Mrs. Collier used to call me Baby Bird.” I frown. “That makes sense?” “The note,” he says gazing at me. “The ransom note that fucker left. It went something like ‘Do you know who I am? Because I know who you are, Baby Bird.’ ” This makes no sense to me at all. “It’s from a kid’s book. Christ. The Colliers had it. It was called . . . ‘Are You My Mother?’ Shit.” His eyes widen. “I loved that book.” Oh. I know that book. My heart lurches— Fifty! “Mrs. Collier used to read it to me.” I am at a loss what to say. “Christ. He knew . . . that fucker knew.” “Will you tell the police?” 478/551 “Yes. I will. Christ knows what Clark will do with that information.” Christi- an shakes his head as if trying to clear his thoughts. “Anyway, thank you for this evening.” Whoa. Gear change. “For what?” “Catering for my family at a moment’s notice.” “Don’t thank me, thank Mia and Mrs. Jones. She keeps the pantry well stocked.” He shakes his head as if in exasperation. At me? Why? “How are you feeling, Mrs. Grey?” “Good. How are you feeling?” “I’m fine.” He frowns . . . not understanding my concern. Oh . . . in that case. I trail my fingers down his stomach to his oh-so-happy trail. He laughs and grabs my hand. “Oh no. Don’t get any ideas.” I pout, and he sighs. “Ana, Ana, Ana, what am I going to do with you?” He kisses my hair. “I have some ideas.” I squirm beside him and wince as pain radiates through my upper body from my bruised ribs. “Baby, you’ve been through enough. Besides, I have a bedtime story for you.” Oh? “You wanted to know . . .” He trails off, closes his eyes and swallows. All of the hair on my body stands on end . Shit. He begins in a soft voice. “Picture this, an adolescent boy looking to earn some extra money so he can continue his secret drinking habit.” He shifts onto his side so that we’re lying facing each other and he’s gazing into my eyes. “So I was in the backyard at the Lincolns’, clearing some rubble and trash from the extension Mr. Lincoln had just added to their place . . .” Holy fuck . . . he’s talking. I can barely breathe. Do I want to hear this? Christian closes his eyes and swal- lows. When he opens them again, they are bright but diffident, full of disquieting memories. “It was a hot summer day. I was working hard.” He snorts and shakes his head, suddenly amused. “It was backbreaking work shifting that rubble. I was on my own, and Ele—Mrs. Lincoln appeared out of nowhere and brought me some lemonade. We exchanged small talk, and I made some smart-ass remark . . . and she slapped


comes back to her, like balm on her skin. Did she think I would forget? That I would let her live after what she did to me? Time had passed and Cynisca had thought herself safe. But vengeance works best when it’s aided by patience. And patience is like a child: it must be nursed so it can grow day after day, feeding on sorrow, until it’s as angry as a bull and as lethal as a poisoned fang. Believing her mother has fallen asleep, Electra nestles under her arm, keeping close though the room is hot. Clytemnestra feels her shoulder growing numb but she doesn’t move, afraid that her daughter might pull away. She pretends to sleep until she can hear Electra’s regular breathing against her neck. When she opens her eyes, her daughter is sleeping with her mouth slightly open, her limbs relaxed as they never are when she is awake. Soon, Electra will wake and her sharpness, her alertness will return. But now, as she sleeps with a half smile on her lips, she looks happy and vulnerable, like a goddess resting among humans by mistake. * * * She wakes to the sound of her daughters quarreling. Around them, the walls are bathed in light. Electra sits on the edge of the bed as Aileen arranges her peplos, fastening the fabric at the shoulders with pins. Iphigenia is walking up and down the room, speaking about a lyre competition Electra doesn’t want to take part in. Aileen and Clytemnestra exchange an amused look. Every day, it is the same. Chrysothemis plays with other noblemen’s children, Orestes trains with the boys, while Iphigenia and Electra argue and challenge each other. They are so different that sometimes Clytemnestra wonders how it is possible that they came from the same womb. Fair in appearance, Iphigenia is stubborn, like a flower growing in the desert. Limits and constraints fall apart when faced with her intention, and her cleverness, the brightness with which she does everything she puts her mind to, leaves others speechless and in awe. Electra faces the world without the same confidence. She is never truly happy or satisfied, as if a worm is eating her from the inside, making her constantly fearful and frustrated. She tries to find her peace by shutting herself in the most remote rooms and nooks of the palace, but in the end, she always goes back to Iphigenia. It is as if she needs her sister’s fervor to light the world around her, but it reminds her that, without it, her life would be gray and musty. * * * The merchants don’t go to her, so Clytemnestra must go to them. She sets out late in the afternoon with her most faithful guard, a young man with thick dark hair and umber eyes. Leon has served her for a few years, after winning a wrestling game organized by her husband. He had thrown his opponent into the dust, walked to the dais where king and queen were seated, and knelt in front of


becomes one big pratfall, Montag; everything bang; boff, and wow!" "Wow," said Mildred, yanking at the pillow. "For God's sake, let me be!" cried Montag passionately. Beatty opened his eyes wide. Mildred's hand had frozen behind the pillow. Her fingers were tracing the book's outline and as the shape became familiar her face looked surprised and then stunned. Her mouth opened to ask a question . . . "Empty the theatres save for clowns and furnish the rooms with glass walls and pretty colours running up and down the walls like confetti or blood or sherry or sauterne. You like baseball, don't you, Montag?" "Baseball's a fine game." Now Beatty was almost invisible, a voice somewhere behind a screen of smoke "What's this?" asked Mildred, almost with delight. Montag heaved back against her arms. "What's this here?" "Sit down!" Montag shouted. She jumped away, her hands empty. "We're talking ! " Beatty went on as if nothing had happened. "You like bowling, don't you, Montag?" "Bowling, yes." "And golf?" "Golf is a fine game." "Basketball?" "A fine game.". "Billiards, pool? Football?" "Fine games, all of them." "More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don't have to think, eh? Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before." Mildred went out of the room and slammed the door. The parlour "aunts" began to laugh at the parlour "uncles.", "Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog?lovers, the cat?lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second?generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic?books survive. And the three?dimensional sex?magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade?journals." "Yes, but what about the firemen, then?" asked Montag. "Ah." Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. "What more


Shivering and sleepless in the night, he had listened to her whispering forbidden songs, asking the ice spirits to stop tormenting him. She had slowly warmed his hands until the blisters receded, leaving black scabs on the back of his fingers. She had wicked the wetness from his skin and treated the salt wounds. She could not treat the scars the wyrm had gouged across his mind. ‘I didn’t believe it,’ Einlek said. ‘Even as the corpses came ashore, I refused to believe. I still feared as soon as my arse touched this throne, he’d walk in and throttle me for daring to take his place before my time.’ He blinked hard. ‘Tell me what happened out there. Was it the Ments?’ Wulf tried to swallow past the dusty coal that burned in his craw. He had drunk his weight in fresh water on the journey, but days of gulping brine had scoured him dry. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Something far older.’ ‘The Dreadmount.’ Einlek placed his softer hand on the throne. ‘No. It’s not possible.’ ‘It wasn’t the Nameless One. All stories say his hide was red. This one was black, but they must be kindred,’ Wulf said. His throat was in agony. ‘It came with . . . others. Offspring, thralls, Saint knows what. They razed the fleet with their breath. Every ship.’ ‘Wyrms.’ ‘Aye.’ Einlek tightened his grip. His gaze skitted about the hall, as if he counted unseen things. ‘How are we to fight such an enemy?’ he said. ‘How can we defend against it?’ ‘There is nothing on earth or in Halgalant that could.’ ‘How, by the Saint’s jaw, did you live?’ Einlek demanded. ‘I have swum in that sea, Wulf. I’m not too proud to admit that it beat the breath from me in midsummer. You were adrift in high winter, for days. A woman from the Fortitude was found on the wreckage, frozen to death. Yet here you stand.’ Flame on flesh, foul smoke and embers. The melted thing that had been Vell. Regny in his arms, on fire. He remembered all of this from the Conviction, branded deep into his mind. By chance, he had been carrying a wineskin, fat with sweet water. It had kept him alive as the waves pushed him through the blackened fog, and underneath indifferent stars. He had managed to drag himself on to a broken mast, and tie Regny to it. It had saved him from drowning or losing her – but how he had survived that cold, only the Saint could tell. There had been frost in his hair, barbing his eyelashes. After the first night of searing agony, he had lost all feeling in his skin, and slept without a hope of waking. ‘I chose the sea,’ he finally said. ‘Better ice than fire. Thought I’d just . . . slip away.’ Einlek nodded. ‘I don’t know why I’m still breathing. The Saint would not let me into Halgalant.’ Einlek regarded him, looking torn between pity and disquiet. Wulf tasted salt in the corner of his mouth.


Ella was born, but Peter had never been to a therapist. He didn’t believe in therapy or in marriage counseling. Maud was starting to think that she might have to convince him that Ella could use a session with someone. Earlier, on the phone, she’d been upset about her friends again. “Being single didn’t seem like a problem in my thirties,” Gabriel said. “But now I can see fifty around the corner. And having my parents die in the same year … We weren’t close, but, you know.” He balled up his burrito wrapper and tossed it into the take-out bag. “The way I’m going, I’ll end up getting old in a tent with only my artifacts to keep me warm at night.” “You have plenty of time,” Maud said. “You could have a kid at seventy if you wanted to. Although it might kill you.” “First I have to stop falling for women like me. When both people in a relationship won’t jump, you end up standing on the edge of a building for a long time.” “Whereas I dove right off the building at twenty-four,” Maud said. During graduate school at the University of London, she used to watch out the window as her neighbor, a tall man with slightly hunched shoulders, folded the right leg of his pants and rode off with a satchel slung over his shoulder. One morning, purposefully, she came down the stairs with a bag of garbage as he was getting on his bike and asked him if the building recycled. “You must be the American,” he said. He invited her to dinner a few days later, and a year after that, they were engaged. In Maud’s Irish-American family—four grandparents who had fled poverty and persecution in Ireland; great-uncles who were soldiers of the Irish Republican Brotherhood; the 1916 Easter Proclamation hanging in the bathroom—moving to England had been bad enough. Marrying an Englishman had been an official declaration of rebellion. “It must be nice, though,” Gabriel said now, “only knowing the one relationship. Nothing to compare it to. You date a lot, you get confused.” “Confusion’s always possible if you think too much,” Maud said. Gabriel was studying her, doing that tapping thing with his fingers. “Fifteen years married and still happy,” he said, the intonation somewhere between a statement and a question. “That’s a good score.” “I got lucky with Peter,” Maud said distantly. Her nerves buzzed as Gabriel looked at her, his eyes still blue in the dusk. He must be aware of his effect on people, especially women. He wasn’t arrogant, but he had the confidence of someone unused to rejection. Maud assumed he’d been the one to end most of those relationships he’d listed. She felt protective of herself. “I’m glad you got lucky,” Gabriel said. “Are you?” she said and toasted herself with her beer bottle. Back in the farmhouse, as she brushed her teeth, she examined her face in the bathroom mirror and saw a residual flush in her cheeks and a playful lift to her eyes. When


to kiss a few minutes prior—now I’d never know if I’d been shockingly correct or laughably wrong. The second thing that happened was that the Cheesemonger sketch went viral. By Sunday night at 8 p.m. it had more than five hundred thousand views on YouTube, by Monday it had more than a million, and by Friday it had more than three million. The third thing that happened was that a week and a half later, Noah’s tenth album was released, and when he returned to New York to promote it on both morning and late-night talk shows, he was asked repeatedly about the Cheesemonger, discussed it warmly, and never mentioned me. Even worse, he and Annabel Lily were photographed hanging out together on two separate occasions. One afternoon, they went window-shopping in SoHo, and the next day, they had dinner at a sushi restaurant in the East Village. That night, he was seen leaving her apartment around 11 p.m. It was Henrietta who alerted me, texting after the first round of photos showed up online, What are they thinking???? And then, as if I didn’t understand, Poor Danny!!! I masochistically continued to google Noah for a few weeks, and there wasn’t any more documentation of him with Annabel. Though the photos had been accompanied by disavowals from unnamed sources, meaning their publicists (“Noah and Annabel are just old friends”), another diner at the Japanese restaurant had noted their “flirty vibe” (“They were really enjoying each other”), and the episodes seemed patently staged. I mean, window-shopping—did anyone do that in real life? And for fuck’s sake, just get takeout sushi! But I couldn’t have said if album promotion was the point and cruelty was the byproduct or if exploring a sincere attraction was the point and album promotion was the byproduct. The fourth thing that happened was that Viv and Dr. Theo became a real couple, a long-term couple, though, as she told me later, they didn’t have sex that first night. They did go home together, and they did sleep in the same bed, but they actually slept, after what Viv jokingly but ecstatically described as heavy petting. It was with Viv and Dr. Theo that I’d left the after-after-party not long after Noah’s departure. We all climbed into the second row of the Escalade, with Viv in the middle, and as I fastened my seat belt, I leaned forward and said to Dr. Theo, “How are you holding up?” “Not sure I’ve been awake at this time since I was a resident, but I’m hanging in there.” Viv said, “Should we pop into Bellevue and you can deliver a baby for old times’ sake?” “I’ll take a rain check on that.” The driver pulled into the street, and less than a minute had passed when I heard a rhythmic breathing, a quieter sound than snoring, and when I leaned forward again, I saw that Dr. Theo had fallen asleep. Viv and I made eye contact, and she smiled. “I like him,” I half whispered and half mouthed. “I do, too,” she


Brad. He’s our best striker!” Mr. Taylor peers over his glasses, unimpressed. “Then I suppose he’d better work quickly.” BRAD We walk through the building in mutinous silence. I want to say this entire thing is Celine’s fault, but let’s be honest: I just spent the last two hours behaving like a ten-year-old and, surprise, surprise, it instantly came back to bite me. I’m still pissed at Celine, though. God, she’s so full of it. Maybe I’m not my older sister Emily studying biomechanics, maybe I’m not my younger brother Mason on a path to play professional football, but I’m just as smart as Celine. And clearly just as childish, because I can’t resist murmuring, “Hope you weren’t expecting Taylor to write your Cambridge recommendation.” She hugs her textbook tight against her Metallica T-shirt, her expression half boredom and half effortless arrogance. “Mr. Darling is a Cambridge alum, actually, so he’s writing mine.” Of fucking course he is. “Who’s writing your recommendation?” she asks innocently, as if she knows I haven’t gotten that far yet, knows I didn’t email any teachers over the summer to help with my application. And, yeah, she does. I can tell by her face, by the barely there smirk waiting to spread. God. If Mum doesn’t stop spilling all my business during Sunday tea with Neneh Bangura, I’m going to…well, I’m going to have very stern words with her about it. “Haven’t decided,” I say flatly. “You should get a move on,” Celine replies, all bossy and superior as we skirt around a noisy pack of year eights. “Or the teachers will be too busy—” My back teeth click together. “I know.” “And contrary to popular belief, they don’t all wait around for the school’s football stars to find time between super important training sessions to request a favor. They have actual jobs and a ton of students to write for, so—” “Celine?” She swings narrow eyes in my direction. “Shut up.” Her jaw tightens and those eyes get even sharper. I look away. So, I haven’t got around to considering recommendations yet. It’s not a big deal. I want to go to uni in Leeds or Bristol—somewhere good but, like, normal, because I can’t imagine anything worse than memorizing tort case law in a class full of stuck-up Celine-a-likes. I’m not worried about my application: my grades are perfect, I can memorize almost anything, and I argue well enough to quiet Celine at least 50 percent of the time. Screw uni; they should call me to the bar right now. I mean, it wouldn’t be my dream job but…it makes sense. What’s the alternative? I spend the rest of my life trying and failing to write a book, my parents finally kick me out by my thirty-fifth birthday because I’m still unemployed, and I die cold and lonely under a bridge like Mr. Darling’s always ranting about? No thanks. Practicing law is the sensible option. Celine opens the door to the stairwell, and I scowl reflexively. The Little Library is a cramped, windowless room down in


in heah and break up mah place! How kin you set and see yo’ wife all trompled on? You ain’t no kinda man at all. You seen dat Tea Cake shove me down! Yes you did! You ain’t raised yo’ hand tuh do nothin’ about it.” Turner removed his pipe and answered: “Yeah, and you see how Ah did swell up too, didn’t yuh? You tell Tea Cake he better be keerful Ah don’t swell up again.” At that Turner crossed his legs the other way and kept right on smoking his pipe. Mrs. Turner hit at him the best she could with her hurt hand and then spoke her mind for half an hour. “It’s a good thing mah brother wuzn’t round heah when it happened do he would uh kilt somebody. Mah son too. Their Eyes Were Watching God 179 Dey got some manhood about ’em. We’se goin’ back tuh Miami where folks is civilized.” Nobody told her right away that her son and brother were already on their way after pointed warnings outside the café. No time for fooling around. They were hurrying into Palm Beach. She’d find out about that later on. Monday morning Coodemay and Sterrett stopped by and begged her pardon profusely and gave her five dollars apiece. Then Coodemay said, “Dey tell me Ah wuz drunk Sat’day night and clownin’ down. Ah don’t ’member uh thing ’bout it. But when Ah git tuh peepin’ through mah likker, dey tell me Ah’m uh mess.” 18 Since Tea Cake and Janie had friended with the Bahaman workers in the ’Glades, they, the “Saws,” had been gradually drawn into the American crowd. They quit hiding out to hold their dances when they found that their American friends didn’t laugh at them as they feared. Many of the Americans learned to jump and liked it as much as the “Saws.” So they began to hold dances night after night in the quarters, usually behind Tea Cake’s house. Often now, Tea Cake and Janie stayed up so late at the fire dances that Tea Cake would not let her go with him to the field. He wanted her to get her rest. So she was home by herself one afternoon when she saw a band of Seminoles passing by. The men walking in front and the laden, stolid women following them like burros. She had seen Indians several times in the ’Glades, in twos and threes, but this was a large party. They were headed towards the Palm Beach road and kept moving steadily. About an hour later another party appeared and went the same way. Then another just before sundown. This time she asked Their Eyes Were Watching God 181 where they were all going and at last one of the men answered her. “Going to high ground. Saw-grass bloom. Hurricane com- ing.” Everybody was talking about it that night. But nobody was worried. The fire dance kept up till nearly dawn. The next day, more Indians moved east, unhurried but steady. Still a blue sky and fair weather.