They stopped, both laughing, and Josie said, ‘How was Neil’s birthday?’ ‘A total success – we ate out at The Sun. The sticky toffee pudding was to die for.’ Lin pulled a face. ‘I incinerated the lasagne. How on earth does Nigella do it, every meal’s so sexy and delicious?’ She shook her head. ‘So – the cruise… Josie, tell me everything.’ Josie was pouring tea into cups. ‘It was fantastic. The Caribbean is incredible.’ ‘The sunshine, the beaches – it must have been stunning…’ Lin was imagining herself there. ‘Weren’t you lonely, Josie?’ ‘I met a fantastic American couple, Arnie and Nancy – I promised we’d stay in touch – and a lovely man called David from Wales.’ Lin caught her breath. ‘You met a man?’ ‘He’s a writer, my age, widowed, gay.’ Josie picked up her cup. ‘He was good company and he could dance.’ Lin nodded, as if she understood, then Josie clapped her hands excitedly. ‘I bought you something…’ She placed a bag in front of her friend. ‘The stuff in tissue paper is yours – the Angostura bitters are for Neil.’ Lin dived in, unwrapping a silver bracelet. ‘Oh, I love it.’ She tore the paper from a book and her face betrayed her terror. ‘A recipe book… Tastes of the Caribbean?’ ‘We’ll have some Caribbean nights in the summer… it’ll be fun.’ ‘Not if I’m cooking, Josie.’ Lin threw her arms around her friend. ‘But thanks so much. Yes, we’ll cook up a storm and dance in the garden. Oh, I can’t wait to hear all about your holiday.’ Josie reached out a hand, patting Lin’s. ‘I adopted a turtle while I was out there. And I’ve brought enough rum back to last us ages. Not that Harry liked rum much…’ She paused, closing her eyes. Lin hesitated. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘I’m fine.’ Josie took a breath. ‘More than fine. When are we next doing lunch with Minnie?’ ‘The Silver Ladies’ lunch? I came round so that we could double check the dates. I think it’s this Saturday, at Odile’s café. Neil’s going for a hike in Old Scratch’s woods.’ ‘I love that you call us Silver Ladies,’ Josie said. ‘It makes me feel like we’re a special group.’ ‘We’re strong women of a certain age… there’s a dignity to the name. I hate getting older… there’s so much prejudice about ageing – and so many problems.’ Lin looked at her fingers. They were stiff and sore this morning. ‘I don’t mind getting older – I just miss Harry.’ Josie exhaled. ‘Minnie couldn’t care less about how old she is. If anyone says anything to her, she tears into them.’ ‘I remember her telling a kid off who called her a crone in the street. What did she say? “Crone means witchlike woman, so I’m going to curse you…” Then she shouted something in Latin that sounded like it had come from Harry Potter.’ ‘It will be nice to see Minnie again.’ Josie cupped her hands around the mug of tea. ‘I wonder what she’s


the northwest. "Many thousands of miles across the ocean," he replied. "Why?" "I am going there." D'Arnot shook his head. "It is impossible, my friend," he said. Tarzan rose, and, going to one of the cupboards, returned with a well-thumbed geography. Turning to a map of the world, he said: "I have never quite understood all this; explain it to me, please." When D'Arnot had done so, showing him that the blue represented all the water on the earth, and the bits of other colors the continents and islands, Tarzan asked him to point out the spot where they now were. D'Arnot did so. "Now point out America," said Tarzan. And as D'Arnot placed his finger upon North America, Tarzan smiled and laid his palm upon the page, spanning the great ocean that lay between the two continents. "You see it is not so very far," he said; "scarce the width of my hand." D'Arnot laughed. How could he make the man understand? Then he took a pencil and made a tiny point upon the shore of Africa. "This little mark," he said, "is many times larger upon this map than your cabin is upon the earth. Do you see now how very far it is?" Tarzan thought for a long time. "Do any white men live in Africa?" he asked. "Yes." "Where are the nearest?" Chapter 25 140 D'Arnot pointed out a spot on the shore just north of them. "So close?" asked Tarzan, in surprise. "Yes," said D'Arnot; "but it is not close." "Have they big boats to cross the ocean?" "Yes." "We shall go there to-morrow," announced Tarzan. Again D'Arnot smiled and shook his head. "It is too far. We should die long before we reached them." "Do you wish to stay here then forever?" asked Tarzan. "No," said D'Arnot. "Then we shall start to-morrow. I do not like it here longer. I should rather die than remain here." "Well," answered D'Arnot, with a shrug, "I do not know, my friend, but that I also would rather die than remain here. If you go, I shall go with you." "It is settled then," said Tarzan. "I shall start for America to-morrow." "How will you get to America without money?" asked D'Arnot. "What is money?" inquired Tarzan. It took a long time to make him understand even imperfectly. "How do men get money?" he asked at last. "They work for it." "Very well. I will work for it, then." "No, my friend," returned D'Arnot, "you need not worry about money, nor need you work for it. I have enough money for two--enough for twenty. Much more than is good for one man and you shall have all you need if ever we reach civilization." So on the following day they started north along the shore. Each man carrying a rifle and ammunition, beside bedding and some food and cooking utensils. The latter seemed to Tarzan a most useless encumbrance, so he threw his away. "But you must learn to eat cooked food, my friend," remonstrated D'Arnot. "No civilized men eat


more conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the briefest--mine a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his hands in his little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us-- as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only when the waiter had left us. "Well--so we're alone!" XXIII "Oh, more or less." I fancy my smile was pale. "Not absolutely. We shouldn't like that!" I went on. "No--I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we have the others." "We have the others--we have indeed the others," I concurred. "Yet even though we have them," he returned, still with his hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, "they don't much count, do they?" I made the best of it, but I felt wan. "It depends on what you call `much'!" "Yes"--with all accommodation--"everything depends!" On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of "work," behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a meaning from the boy's embarrassed back-- none other than the impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was positively HE who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a throb of hope. Wasn't he looking, through the haunted pane, for something he couldn't see?--and wasn't it the first time in the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned


food: lemonade, quiche, sandwiches, cake – dig in.’ ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ Jack said, winking at Florence as he reached for a plate of rolls. There was a rumbling sound in the distance, then a motorbike leaped over a mound on the horizon, racing towards them, a figure in leather passing by in a cloud of smoke. Florence shuddered. Tina pointed a thumb. ‘Bobby Ledbury rides that old bike everywhere. Did you hear him revving up?’ ‘Teenage angst,’ Lin suggested. ‘He was in the year above me in school,’ Jack explained. ‘That makes him twenty-three or twenty-four. Florence and I were in the same year.’ ‘I was.’ ‘He was a rebel, Bobby Ledbury. So badly behaved at school… the girls loved him.’ Jack munched the last morsel of his roll. ‘Did they?’ Cecily asked craftily as her eyes moved to Florence. Florence stared at the sausage roll in her hands; she’d eaten very little. Jack said. ‘I saw Natalie this afternoon. She was with her fiancé – they were walking in the woods, all loved up.’ ‘Oh, they are often down here,’ Tina explained. ‘I expect they must need a break from that big family in the farmhouse. Mind you…’ She elbowed Minnie. ‘I was always in the woods when I was younger, snogging some lad or another. It’s where everyone goes.’ Florence blushed and Minnie added, ‘Not everyone – I was always at home studying.’ ‘You were,’ Tina laughed. ‘Dad thought that there was something wrong with you, not going down to the woods with boys. At least he never minded when I was out.’ She sniffed. ‘Fat lot of good it did me.’ Cecily lifted a bottle. ‘Pink lemonade, anyone?’ ‘Yes please.’ Jack raised his glass, then he turned to Florence. ‘You want some? Singing’s thirsty work.’ Florence held out her glass and muttered thanks. ‘Look who’s here,’ Cecily exclaimed delightedly as the Toomey brothers emerged from the gloom carrying a brace of rabbits. ‘Stop and have a drink with us, boys – you must be hungry too.’ ‘Well, we could…’ Devlin paused, the rabbit swinging from his shoulder. Lin covered her mouth as she stared at the limp animal. ‘Ah, no, we should be on our way, Dev,’ Finn muttered with a glance at Florence, then at Cecily. ‘Another time, maybe. Kind of you, though.’ ‘We’ll be seeing you, then,’ Devlin grunted. ‘My dad sends you his best, by the way, Josie.’ ‘Give him mine too.’ Josie raised a glass and Cecily eyed her thoughtfully as she offered a plate of biscuits. Jack began to sing ‘Norwegian Wood’. His voice was filled with emotion, and Lin felt tears spring to her eyes. Then Cecily gave a small cough. ‘There is a special reason why I invited you all to Old Scratch’s woods this afternoon.’ She gazed around the group, her eyes resting on Florence, smiling briefly, then to Minnie, Josie and Lin. Florence held her breath. Cecily’s eyes glinted as if she had a secret plan, and Florence knew what it was. Cecily had invited Jack Lovejoy


a fingernail along the edge. “It was only a few times, and I was lucky not to get caught. Again, I need to thank Mr. Grey for that. He could have had me thrown in jail.” “I don’t think he’d do that,” I murmur. Suddenly there is a flurry of activity outside the meeting room, and instinct- ively I know that Christian is in the building. A moment later he bursts through the door, and before he closes it, I catch Taylor’s eye as he stands patiently out- side. Taylor’s mouth is set in a grim line, and he doesn’t return my tight smile. Oh hell, even he’s mad at me. Christian’s burning gray gaze pins first me then Leila to our chairs. His de- meanor is quietly determined, but I know better, and I suspect Leila does, too. The menacing cool glint in his eyes reveals the truth—he’s emanating rage, though he hides it well. In his gray suit, with his dark tie loosened and the top button of his white shirt undone, he looks at once businesslike and casual . . . and hot. His hair 326/551 is in disarray—no doubt because he’s been running his hands through it in exasperation. Leila looks nervously down at the edge of the table, running her index finger along the edge again as Christian looks from me to her and then to Prescott. “You,” he says to Prescott in a soft tone. “You’re fired. Get out now.” I blanch. Oh no—this isn’t fair. “Christian—” I make to stand up. He holds his index finger up at me in warning. “Don’t,” he says. His voice so ominously quiet that I’m immediately silenced and rooted to my seat. Bowing her head, Prescott walks briskly out of the room to join Taylor. Christian shuts the door behind her and walks to the edge of the table. Crap! Crap! Crap! That was my fault. Christian stands opposite Leila, and placing both hands on the wooden surface, he leans forward. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he growls at her. “Christian!” I gasp. He ignores me. “Well?” he demands. Leila peeks up at him through long lashes, her eyes wide, her face ashen, her rosy glow gone. “I wanted to see you, and you wouldn’t let me,” she whispers. “So you came here to harass my wife?” His voice is quiet. Too quiet. Leila looks down at the table again. He stands, glowering at her. “Leila, if you come anywhere near my wife again, I will cut off all support. Doctors, art school, medical insurance—all of it—gone. Do you understand?” “Christian—” I try again. But he silences me with a chilling look. Why is he being so unreasonable? My compassion for this sad woman blooms. “Yes,” she says, her voice just audible. “What’s Susannah doing in reception?” “She came with me.” He runs a hand through his hair, glaring at her. “Christian, please,” I beg him. “Leila just wants to say thank you. That’s all.” He ignores me, concentrating his wrath on Leila. “Did you stay with


our neighbor’s mailbox before saying, I can’t do this, turn around, and never got into a car with me in the driver’s seat again. His temper could be unpredictable. He was not what I’d call good in a crisis. At times, though, he surprised me. I remembered his serene pride at my wedding, the only one of four parents who didn’t make me cry or lose sleep that week, and how much it helped to talk to him when I was homesick in my first semester of college. Tell me all about it, you know my hugs cure the blues. He was not my idea of a rock, but he was my mother’s constant. Her life, for nearly forty-five years. She shouldn’t have to fight for her survival without him. The bright colors in the paintings all around us blurred together. Blinking back tears, I did what I thought Dad would have if he were here: I tried to make her laugh. “You know, it’s not like he would have been much help.” I was rewarded with a faint chuckle. “That’s probably true. God, he’d be so upset.” “He’d be furious. Because this is bullshit, Mom,” I said. “I miss him terribly, and sometimes I still can’t believe he’s gone,” she told me. “A part of me—the part that was his wife for forty years—just wants to be with him.” I understood what she was saying. She had thought about halting her treatment. I knew that as long as there was any hope of gaining more time, she would seize it with both hands. In the months to come, she would fight with a fierceness that would surprise even me. I would watch her struggle and rail against her loss of mobility, independence, the ability to make hard decisions or follow complex conversations, and sometimes I would find myself thinking back to this moment in the diner, the only time she ever admitted to me that she had considered her death without dread. She believed that she would see my father again, and as much as she wanted to live, she longed for that meeting. “I still feel like I’m married to him, even now,” she said. “When you’re with someone for that long, you know, you’ll always have that life together, even when one of you is gone.” We had just celebrated our second Christmas without my dad. Sometimes, sitting with my mom in the house they’d shared, it was so easy to believe that he was out for a walk, or in another room; that any moment, he would enter and tease one of us, pick an argument, turn on one of his ball games. I knew I’d never get used to seeing her without him. But sometimes she managed to bring him near again. She was the bridge between us, remembering things even I forgot. When she was gone, would it be like losing him again, too? We both began to cry, drawing more glances I didn’t care about. For a moment, I considered asking her for the reassurance


to Mrs. Archer might have been the twin-sister of the fair and still youngish woman drooping against a gilt armchair before a green rep curtain. Mrs. van der Luyden still wore black velvet and Venetian point when she went into society--or rather (since she never dined out) when she threw open her own doors to receive it. Her fair hair, which had faded without turning grey, was still parted in flat overlapping points on her forehead, and the straight nose that divided her pale blue eyes was only a little more pinched about the nostrils than when the portrait had been painted. She always, indeed, struck Newland Archer as having been rather gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers keep for years a rosy life-in-death. Like all his family, he esteemed and admired Mrs. van der Luyden; but he found her gentle bending sweetness less approachable than the grimness of some of his mother's old aunts, fierce spinsters who said "No" on principle before they knew what they were going to be asked. Mrs. van der Luyden's attitude said neither yes nor no, but always appeared to incline to clemency till her thin lips, wavering into the shadow of a smile, made the almost invariable reply: "I shall first have to talk this over with my husband." She and Mr. van der Luyden were so exactly alike that Archer often wondered how, after forty years of the closest conjugality, two such merged identities ever separated themselves enough for anything as controversial as a talking-over. But as neither had ever reached a decision without prefacing it by this mysterious conclave, Mrs. Archer and her son, having set forth their case, waited resignedly for the familiar phrase. Mrs. van der Luyden, however, who had seldom surprised any one, now surprised them by reaching her long hand toward the bell-rope. "I think," she said, "I should like Henry to hear what you have told me." A footman appeared, to whom she gravely added: "If Mr. van der Luyden has finished reading the newspaper, please ask him to be kind enough to come." She said "reading the newspaper" in the tone in which a Minister's wife might have said: "Presiding at a Cabinet meeting"--not from any arrogance of mind, but because the habit of a life-time, and the attitude of her friends and relations, had led her to consider Mr. van der Luyden's least gesture as having an almost sacerdotal importance. Her promptness of action showed that she considered the case as pressing as Mrs. Archer; but, lest she should be thought to have committed herself in advance, she added, with the sweetest look: "Henry always enjoys seeing you, dear Adeline; and he will wish to congratulate Newland." The double doors had solemnly reopened and between them appeared Mr. Henry van der Luyden, tall, spare and frock-coated, with faded fair hair, a straight nose like his wife's and the same look of frozen gentleness in eyes that were merely pale grey instead of pale blue. Mr. van


looked like a grasshopper in a fit when he did the new step. Laurie and I couldn't help laughing. Did you hear us?" "No, but it was very rude. What were you about all that time, hidden away there?" Jo told her adventures, and by the time she had finished they were at home. With many thanks, they said good night and crept in, hoping to disturb no one, but the instant their door creaked, two little nightcaps bobbed up, and two sleepy but eager voices cried out . . . "Tell about the party! Tell about the party!" With what Meg called `a great want of manners' Jo had saved some bonbons for the little girls, and they soon subsided, after hearing the most thrilling events of the evening. "I declare, it really seems like being a fine young lady, to come home from the party in a carriage and sit in my dressing gown wit a maid to wait on me," said Meg, as Jo bound up her foot with arnica and brushed her hair. "I don't believe fine young ladies enjoy themselves a bit more than we do, in spite of our burned hair, old gowns, one glove apiece and tight slippers that sprain our ankles when we are silly enough to wear them," And I think Jo was quite right. -------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Chapter" I.4 Burdens "Oh, dear, how hard it does seem to take up our packs and go on," sighed Meg the morning after the party, for now the holidays were over, the week of merrymaking did not fit her for going on easily with the task she never liked. "I wish it was Christmas or New Year's all the time. Wouldn't it be fun?" answered Jo, yawning dismally. "We shouldn't enjoy ourselves half so much as we do now. But it does seem so nice to have little suppers and bouquets, and go to parties, and drive home, and read and rest,and not work. It's like other people, you know, and I always envy girls who do such things, I'm so fond of luxury," said Meg, trying to decide which of two shabby gowns was the least shabby. "Well, we can't have it, so don't let us grumble but shoulder our bundles and trudge along as cheerfully as Marmee does. I'm sure Aunt March is a regular Old Man of the Sea to me, but I suppose when I've learned to carry her without complaining, she will tumble off, or get so light that I shan't mind her." This idea tickled Jo's fancy and put her in good spirits, but Meg didn't brighten, for her burden, consisting of four spoiled children, seemed heavier than ever. She had not heart enough even to make herself pretty as usual by putting on a blue neck ribbon and dressing her hair in the most becoming way. "Where's the use of looking nice, when no one sees me but those cross midgets, and no one cares whether I'm pretty or not?" she muttered, shutting her drawer with a jerk. "I


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

How often had he seen himself as a priest wielding calmly and humbly the awful power of which angels and saints stood in reverence! His soul had loved to muse in secret on this desire. He had seen himself, a young and silent-mannered priest, entering a confessional swiftly, ascending the altarsteps, incensing, genuflecting, accomplishing the vague acts of the priesthood which pleased him by reason of their semblance of reality and of their distance from it. In that dim life which he had lived through in his musings he had assumed the voices and gestures which he had noted with various priests. He had bent his knee sideways like such a one, he had shaken the thurible only slightly like such a one, his chasuble had swung open like that of such another as he turned to the altar again after having blessed the people. And above all it had pleased him to fill the second place in those dim scenes of his imagining. He shrank from the dignity of celebrant because it displeased him to imagine that all the vague pomp should end in his own person or that the ritual should assign to him so clear and final an office. He longed for the minor sacred offices, to be vested with the tunicle of subdeacon at high mass, to stand aloof from the altar, forgotten by the people, his shoulders covered with a humeral veil, holding the paten within its folds or, when the sacrifice had been accomplished, to stand as deacon in a dalmatic of cloth of gold on the step below the celebrant, his hands joined and his face towards the people, and sing the chant ITE MISSA EST. If ever he had seen himself celebrant it was as in the pictures of the mass in his child's massbook, in a church without worshippers, save for the angel of the sacrifice, at a bare altar, and served by an acolyte scarcely more boyish than himself. In vague sacrificial or sacramental acts alone his will seemed drawn to go forth to encounter reality; and it was partly the absence of an appointed rite which had always constrained him to inaction whether he had allowed silence to cover his anger or pride or had suffered only an embrace he longed to give. He listened in reverent silence now to the priest's appeal and through the words he heard even more distinctly a voice bidding him approach, offering him secret knowledge and secret power. He would know then what was the sin of Simon Magus and what the sin against the Holy Ghost for which there was no forgiveness. He would know obscure things, hidden from others, from those who were conceived and born children of wrath. He would know the sins, the sinful longings and sinful thoughts and sinful acts, of others, hearing them murmured into his ears in the confessional under the shame of a darkened chapel by the lips of women and of girls; but rendered immune mysteriously at his ordination by the imposition of hands, his soul


ludicrous description came fluttering out of all her books at unlucky moments. She got through her lessons as well as she could, and managed to escape reprimands by being a model of deportment. She was a great favorite with her mates, being good-tempered and possessing the happy art of pleasing without effort. Her little airs and graces were much admired, so were her accomplishments, for besides her drawing, she could play twelve tunes, crochet, and read French without mispronouncing more than two-thirds of the words. She had a plaintive way of saying, "When Papa was rich we did so-and-so," which was very touching, and her long words were considered `perfectly elegant' by the girls. Amy was in a fair way to be spoiled, for everyone petted her, and her small vanities and selfishnesses were growing nicely. One thing, however, rather quenched the vanities. She had to wear her cousin's clothes. Now Florence's mama hadn't a particle of taste, and Amy suffered deeply at having to wear a red instead of a blue bonnet, unbecoming gowns, and fussy aprons that did not fit. Everything was good, well made, and little worn, but Amy's artistic eyes were much afflicted, especially this winter, when her school dress was a dull purple with yellow dots and no trimming. "My only comfort," she said to Meg, with tears in her eyes, "is that Mother doesn't take tucks in my dresses whenever I'm naughty, as Maria Parks's mother does. My dear, it's really dreadful, for sometimes she is so bad her frock is up to her knees, and she can't come to school. When I think of this deggerredation, I fell that I can bear even my flat nose and purple gown with yellow skyrockets on it." Meg was Amy's confidante and monitor, and by some strange attraction of opposites Jo was gentle Beth's. To Jo alone did the shy child tell her thoughts, and over her big harum-scarum sister Beth unconsciously exercised more influence than anyone in the family. The two older girls were a great deal to one another, but each took one of the younger sisters into her keeping and watched over her in her own way, `playing mother' they called it, and put their sisters in the places of discarded dolls with the maternal instinct of little women. "Has anybody got anything to tell? It's been such a dismal day I'm really dying for some amusement," said Meg, as they sat sewing together that evening. "I had a queer time with Aunt today, and, as I got the best of it, I'll tell you about it," began Jo, who dearly loved to tell stories. "I was reading that everlasting Belsham, and droning away as I always do, for Aunt soon drops off, and then I take out some nice book, and read like fury till she wakes up. I actually made myself sleepy, and before she began to nod, I gave such a gape that she asked me what I meant by opening my mouth wide enough to take the whole book in at


Mathis. You seemed to get on well with him in Monte Carlo on that other Casino job. And I'm going to tell Washington because of the NATO angle. CIA have got one or two good men at Fontainebleau with the joint intelligence chaps there. Anything else?' Bond shook his head. 'I'd certainly like to have Mathis, sir.' 'Well, we'll see. Try and bring it off. We're going to look pretty foolish if you don't. And watch out. This sounds an amusing job, but I don't think it's going to be. Le Chiffre is a good man. Well, best of luck.' 'Thank you, sir,' said Bond and went to the door. 'Just a minute.' Bond turned. I think I'll keep you covered, Bond. Two heads are better than one and you'll need someone to run your communications. I'll think it over. They'll get in touch with you at Royale. You needn't worry. It'll be someone good.' Bond would have preferred to work alone, but one didn't argue with M. He left the room hoping that the man they sent would be loyal to him and neither stupid, nor, worse still, ambitious. CHAPTER 4 - L'ENNEMI ?COUTE As two weeks later, James Bond awoke in his room at the Htel Splendide, some of this history passed through his mind. He had arrived at Royale-les-Eaux in time for luncheon two days before. There had been no attempt to contact him and there had been no flicker of curiosity when he had signed the register 'James Bond, Port Maria, Jamaica'. M had expressed no interest in his cover. 'Once you start to make a set at Le Chiffre at the tables, you'll have had it,' he said. 'But wear a cover that will stick with the general public.' Bond knew Jamaica well, so he asked to be controlled from there and to pass as a Jamaican plantocrat whose father had made his pile in tobacco and sugar and whose son chose to play it away on the stock markets and in casinos. If inquiries were made, he would quote Charles DaSilva of Chaffery's, Kingston, as his attorney. Charles would make the story stick. Bond had spent the last two afternoons and most of the nights at the Casino, playing complicated progression systems on the even chances at roulette. He made a high banco at chemin-de-fer whenever he heard one offered. If he lost, he would suivi once and not chase it further if he lost the second time. In this way he had made some three million francs and had given his nerves and card-sense a thorough work-out. He had got the geography of the Casino clear in his mind. Above all, he had been able to observe Le Chiffre at the tables and to note ruefully that he was a faultless and lucky gambler. Bond liked to make a good breakfast. After a cold shower, he sat at the writing-table in front of the window. He looked out at the beautiful day and consumed half a pint of iced orange juice, three scrambled eggs and


me whether I thought it would be imprudent in him to settle so early; whether I thought her too young: in short, whether I approved his choice altogether; having some apprehension perhaps of her being considered (especially since your making so much of her) as in a line of society above him. I was very much pleased with all that he said. I never hear better sense from any one than Robert Martin. He always speaks to the purpose; open, straightforward, and very well judging. He told me every thing; his circumstances and plans, and what they all proposed doing in the event of his marriage. He is an excellent young man, both as son and brother. I had no hesitation in advising him to marry. He proved to me that he could afford it; and that being the case, I was convinced he could not do better. I praised the fair lady too, and altogether sent him away very happy. If he had never esteemed my opinion before, he would have thought highly of me then; and, I dare say, left the house thinking me the best friend and counsellor man ever had. This happened the night before last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not allow much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not appear to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should be at Mrs. Goddard's to-day; and she may be detained by a visitor, without thinking him at all a tiresome wretch." "Pray, Mr. Knightley," said Emma, who had been smiling to herself through a great part of this speech, "how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?" "Certainly," replied he, surprized, "I do not absolutely know it; but it may be inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?" "Come," said she, "I will tell you something, in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday--that is, he wrote, and was refused." This was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr. Knightley actually looked red with surprize and displeasure, as he stood up, in tall indignation, and said, "Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the foolish girl about?" "Oh! to be sure," cried Emma, "it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her." "Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin? madness, if it is so; but I hope you are mistaken." "I saw her answer!--nothing could be clearer." "You saw her answer!--you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your doing. You persuaded her to refuse him." "And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing) I should not feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martin is a very respectable young man, but I cannot admit him


They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding the loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along in the rear. As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly hands searched for broken bones. By the time his search had disclosed nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man watched it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly, they saw its back end drop down, as into a rut, and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air. Mercedes's scream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step to run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen. The bottom had dropped out of the trail. John Thornton and Buck looked at each other. "You poor devil," said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand. Chapter VI For the Love of a Man When John Thornton froze his feet in the previous December his partners had made him comfortable and left him to get well, going on themselves up the river to get out a raft of saw-logs for Dawson. He was still limping slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but with the continued warm weather even the slight limp left him. And here, lying by the river bank through the long spring days, watching the running water, listening lazily to the songs of birds and the hum of nature, Buck slowly won back his strength. A rest comes very good after one has travelled three thousand miles, and it must be confessed that Buck waxed lazy as his wounds healed, his muscles swelled out, and the flesh came back to cover his bones. For that matter, they were all loafing,--Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet and Nig,--waiting for the raft to come that was to carry them down to Dawson. Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her first advances. She had the doctor trait which some dogs possess; and as a mother cat washes her kittens, so she washed and cleansed Buck's wounds. Regularly, each morning after he had finished his breakfast, she performed her self- appointed task, till he came to look for her ministrations as much as he did for Thornton's. Nig, equally friendly, though less demonstrative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and half deerhound, with eyes that laughed and a boundless good nature. To Buck's surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy toward him. They seemed to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton. As Buck grew stronger they enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games, in which Thornton himself could not forbear to join; and in this fashion Buck romped through his convalescence and into a new existence. Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never experienced at Judge


your time reminding me that I’m on par with a skanky villain from a mid-2000s CW show, I—” “I am able to multitask.” He sounds . . . not upset, but on his way. Not his usual detached self. “I can admire you as a scientist and at the same time resent what you’re doing to my brother.” “Allegedly doing to your brother. And . . .” Am I being needlessly antagonistic? No. No, Jack and I are antagonists. Insulin and glucagon. Rey and Kylo Ren. Galileo and the entire Catholic Church, circa 1615. “It’s hard to believe that you respect me when all I know you for is dissing the very people who do my job and advocating for George to be hired.” “That has nothing to do with you, and everything with George—who you know nothing about.” “Right. Maybe if I met him and heard all about his one and a half publications, I’d withdraw my application in cowed admiration.” Jack’s eyes widen. “What?” He bites the inside of his cheek. “Elsie. You’re operating on some pretty big assumptions—” “Elsie. Here you are.” Monica crosses the cowhide toward us. She looks at me. Then at Jack. Then at me again. “I thought you might need some saving,” she murmurs in my ear. Judging from his half smile, Jack heard, too. “I was just making sure she still wants to work with us after Christos put his hand down his waistband while trying to convince her that cereal is technically soup.” Jack’s tone is once again amused. Relaxed. “He does make some valid points,” I interject before Monica field-dresses Jack on the cowhide. “Monica, this evening has been so lovely. Thank you so much for having me in your beautiful home.” “But of course. Have you met my family?” “Your husband, yes. His research is fascinating.” He’s an evolutionary biologist. We teared up together over the tawny frogmouths, who mate for life and let themselves starve by the body of their dead partner. Good times. “What about Austin, my son? He just got home. He’s staying with us— currently between . . . careers. Looks like spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to major in golf management was not a good investment.” Her smile is tight. “Did you know Jack and Austin hang out?” “Oh.” I look between Jack and Monica, who seem to find the fact, respectively, amusing and teeth-grind worthy. “We play basketball at the same gym,” Jack explains. His voice vibrates through me, like he’s very close. “On Sunday nights. Right during our family dinner—which Austin hasn’t attended in weeks.” “Maybe you should install a hoop in your living room.” He points at the wall. “Right there, between those two fossils?” “Maybe you should install a hoop up your—oh, there he is. Austin, dear, let me introduce you to our guest of honor.” A tall man resentfully stops staring at his phone to come to us. He’s handsome in a common, forgettable kind of way, and initially I think that’s why he looks vaguely familiar. But as I


a student. The hazing situation in the late aughts, and the resulting expulsions. The recent fallout from the school ending its football team. The debate about AP classes. The 1995 death of Thalia Keith. If you’d asked me at the time why I included Thalia I’d have said I was just trying to get them thinking, trying to lay out as many different points on the Granby timeline as I could. I’d have believed it, too. Alder said, “My concept is, like, what if they’d had podcasts back then, so, sort of a cross between old radio and podcasts. So I’m a Granby student from the ’30s, talking about life. I’m basically the only Black kid at Granby and then there’s the Great Depression and, like, Roosevelt—” A girl named Jamila interrupted. “You’d have to pick a year,” she said. “There’s a huge difference between 1930 and 1939.” Alder nodded slowly, rolling a tissue to a point in his hand. “1938,” he said. “It’s 1938, and I’m a podcasting kid sending messages into the void, and I’m inventing podcasts as I go.” “1938 was the year that War of the Worlds—” I started, but Alder slapped the table, grinned, pointed at me. “Yes!” he said. “You get it!” Jamila planned to do a series on financial aid and race at Granby. That sounded like a tough job reportorially, as I couldn’t imagine the admissions office being terribly open on the subject, but Jamila seemed determined and well-informed. I’d hoped they’d at least read my email, but I hadn’t dreamed they’d come with notes, with research already done, some with backup proposals, too. By the time we got around the table, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they had grant money secured. The kid with purple hair, Lola, who used they/them pronouns and had spoken at length about their passion for elephant welfare, wanted to interview restaurant workers in town. Alyssa Birkyt, a quiet skier who’d already committed to Dartmouth, had settled on the complicated legacy of Arsareth Gage Granby. Only one demurred: Britt, an intense girl with long caramel hair, who would have struck me as a typical golden-child Granby student of my own era (loose cashmere sweater, cute jeans, genetically blessed cheekbones) if it weren’t for the ankh tattoo on her inner wrist and the way she talked with no embarrassment about clinical depression when we first went around. Her voice was dry and deep, somewhere between a smoker’s and a fifty-year-old lawyer’s. She shrugged when it was her turn. “I’m torn between a few ideas.” After class, she hung back near the door, waiting out Alder’s monologue about the links he planned to send me to his favorite music criticism podcasts and his favorite documentary series, and also a podcast where the earliest blogs of the late ’90s were read aloud. He blew Britt a kiss as he left, an actor floating out of a party held in his honor. “I, um,” Britt said, looking at the floor and then over my shoulder. “Okay, this is no offense, but,


which your hereditary resentments--justifiable or otherwise--may have had a bearing on my affairs. You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyncheon family, ever since my grandfather's days, have been prosecuting a still unsettled claim to a very large extent of territory at the Eastward?" "Often," replied Maule,--and it is said that a smile came over his face,--"very often,--from my father!" "This claim," continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing a moment, as if to consider what the carpenter's smile might mean, "appeared to be on the very verge of a settlement and full allowance, at the period of my grandfather's decease. It was well known, to those in his confidence, that he anticipated neither difficulty nor delay. Now, Colonel Pyncheon, I need hardly say, was a practical man, well acquainted with public and private business, and not at all the person to cherish ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following out of an impracticable scheme. It is obvious to conclude, therefore, that he had grounds, not apparent to his heirs, for his confident anticipation of success in the matter of this Eastern claim. In a word, I believe,--and my legal advisers coincide in the belief, which, moreover, is authorized, to a certain extent, by the family traditions,--that my grandfather was in possession of some deed, or other document, essential to this claim, but which has since disappeared." "Very likely," said Matthew Maule,--and again, it is said, there was a dark smile on his face,--"but what can a poor carpenter have to do with the grand affairs of the Pyncheon family?" "Perhaps nothing," returned Mr. Pyncheon, "possibly much!" Here ensued a great many words between Matthew Maule and the proprietor of the Seven Gables, on the subject which the latter had thus broached. It seems (although Mr. Pyncheon had some hesitation in referring to stories so exceedingly absurd in their aspect) that the popular belief pointed to some mysterious connection and dependence, existing between the family of the Maules and these vast unrealized possessions of the Pyncheons. It was an ordinary saying that the old wizard, hanged though he was, had obtained the best end of the bargain in his contest with Colonel Pyncheon; inasmuch as he had got possession of the great Eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or two of garden-ground. A very aged woman, recently dead, had often used the metaphorical expression, in her fireside talk, that miles and miles of the Pyncheon lands had been shovelled into Maule's grave; which, by the bye, was but a very shallow nook, between two rocks, near the summit of Gallows Hill. Again, when the lawyers were making inquiry for the missing document, it was a by-word that it would never be found, unless in the wizard's skeleton hand. So much weight had the shrewd lawyers assigned to these fables, that (but Mr. Pyncheon did not see fit to inform the carpenter of the fact) they had secretly caused the wizard's grave to be searched. Nothing was discovered, however, except that, unaccountably, the right hand of the skeleton was gone. Now, what was unquestionably


smashed his face against the locked door. Pain blinded him, and he let out a hoarse cry. He felt the blood sliding down his nose, staining his lips, and his eyes were tearing up from the pain. He closed them and managed to find the door handle by touch alone, yanking it open and stumbling out into the hallway. His hands brushed against picture frames hanging from the wall as he tried to steady himself. “Tristán!” Dorotea said. He opened his eyes and realized she was standing a few paces from him, together with the photographer. They both stared at Tristán. “A no-nosebleed,” he stammered. “I have a nosebleed.” “Let’s head back into the bathroom.” “No! Not the bathroom.” “Tristán! Where else—” “I should go,” he said. “I feel shitty.” “Okay, look, fine, get out of that costume before you stain it with blood,” Dorotea said, reaching into the bathroom and handing him a towel, which he pressed against his face. She pushed him toward her bedroom, where he’d left his regular clothes. Tristán changed as quickly as he could. His hands were still shaking, and he had a hard time with the buttons of his dress shirt; in his haste he smeared the collar with blood. He was putting on his jacket when Dorotea knocked and opened the door, looking at him with a severe face. “You said you were clean, Tristán.” “I’m not on anything,” he replied, running a hand through his hair. The nosebleed had finally stopped. The terror remained, his stomach an uncomfortable knot, and he knew despite his protestations Dorotea must be thinking he was now into even worse stuff than before. “I should go. We can finish the shoot another day.” Dorotea did not reply. Or if she did, he did not hear her over the roaring in his ears. He had the beginning of a headache, and his nose still ached brutally. He put on his sunglasses, hailed a cab, and went in search of Montserrat. 18 The shock of seeing Tristán’s face gave way to relief. Tristán steadied Montserrat and wrapped his arms around her. “Dear God, Momo,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d find you.” Montserrat clutched him tight and let out a sigh. Her mouth felt dry. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “You left a message.” Did she? Montserrat could hardly remember what she’d done earlier that day. The building had left her with trembling hands and a quickly beating heart. She took a deep breath, glanced at the doorway behind her as if making sure nothing or no one had stepped outside. Then she took his hand and pulled him down the street. “Come on, let’s go. I saw something weird in there.” “You too? Well, I guess trauma comes better in pairs.” “What do you mean?” “I saw Karina again.” Montserrat turned a corner, unsure where they were headed. She walked quickly despite the pain in her leg. “What, at your apartment?” “No. I was at a shoot. A ruined shoot now. I messed up.” “What was she


doing?” I’ve never seen a grown man look so frightened. He jumps a literal half foot before smashing his laptop shut with more force than is necessary. “Oh god,” he says, burying his head in his hands. “You weren’t supposed to see that.” My eyes flick between him and the closed laptop. Trying to hold back a laugh, I ask, “Are you filming a Cameo?” Finn nods miserably. “It’s embarrassing. I don’t get that many requests, but I try to do a decent job with the ones that do come in.” “I’m sure they’re great.” “You’re trying really hard not to laugh right now, aren’t you?” “So hard.” When he opens his laptop back up, I notice he’s wearing gray sweatpants. I don’t know what it is about them, but they can instantly take a guy from a six to a ten, and Finn was already far beyond a six. “Come out in the snow with me,” I say. “We can at least take some cute photos of you hauling firewood for your Instagram to fawn over.” We bundle in the warmest coats we brought, Finn’s red hair spiking out from beneath a wool beanie. “This is real snow.” There’s some amount of awe in my voice as we traipse through it. The inn is surrounded by a forest, the snow still mostly untouched by footsteps. It’s too beautiful to mind the cold. “As opposed to?” “We don’t get this in the Northwest,” I explain. “One year, I went up to Whistler with an ex, and I spent all this time planning the perfect winter outfits. Then we got there and . . . nothing. It was, like, a low of fifty-two. I was devastated.” “An ex.” Finn sounds intrigued. “Tell me more about Chandler Cohen’s dating history.” “As you know, it’s been mostly defined by all the pining.” I hug my coat tighter. “I had my first boyfriend in high school—we broke up after graduation because we were going to different schools. Then in college, there was David, who I mentioned last night. A guy I dated my senior year and after graduation, but the immediate unemployment was too much of a shock for us to last,” I say. “A couple others, but there hasn’t really been anyone serious for a few years.” Because I put my career first. Because I assumed everything would fall into place with Wyatt. “I know you dated Hallie for a while, but I don’t know much about your other relationships, aside from . . . what didn’t happen in the bedroom and that they’ve all been with Hollywood people. All actors?” Of course I’m not asking about it because I’m wondering if he’ll suddenly say, You know what? It’s time for a change—I’m done with Hollywood dating. Thanks so much for bringing it up again, Chandler! And of course, he doesn’t. “Mostly. I dated a costume designer on Just My Type, but we were only together for a few months. Hallie was the most serious one. And we broke up . . . six years


the sandwiches, and put them neatly on a broken stone, rubbing it clean first. Then they built up a fire, with the paper underneath and the sticks arranged criss-cross on top. It was fun when they lighted the paper. It flared up and the sticks at once caught fire, for they were very old and dry. Soon there was a fine cracking fire going and the little ruined room was lighted by dancing flames. It was very dark outside now, for the clouds hung almost low enough to touch the top of the castle tower! And how they raced by! The wind sent them off to the northeast, roaring behind them with a noise like the sea itself. "I've never, never heard the sea making such an awful noise," said Anne. "Never! It really sounds as if it's shouting at the top of its voice." What with the howling of the wind and the crashing of the great waves all round the little island, the children could hardly hear themselves speak! They had to shout at one another. "Let's have our dinner!" yelled Dick, who was feeling terribly hungry as usual. "We can't do anything much while this storm lasts." "Yes, let's," said Anne, looking longingly at the ham sandwiches. "It will be fun to have a picnic round the fire in this dark old room. I wonder how long ago other people had a meal here. I wish I could see them." "Well, I don't, said Dick, looking round half-scared as if he expected to see the old-time people walk in to share their picnic. "It's quite a queer enough day without wanting things like that to happen." They all felt better when they were eating the sandwiches and drinking the ginger-beer. The fire flared up as more and more sticks caught, and gave out quite a pleasant warmth, for now that the wind had got up so strongly, the day had become cold. "We'll take it in turn to fetch sticks," said George. But Anne didn't want to go alone. She was trying her best not to show that she was afraid of the storm- but it was more than she could do to go out of the cosy room into the rain and thunder by herself. Tim didn't seem to like the storm either. He sat close by George, his ears cocked, and growled whenever the thunder rumbled. The children fed him with titbits and he ate them eagerly, for he was hungry too. All the children had four biscuits each. "I think I shall give all mine to Tim," said George. "I didn't bring him any of his own biscuits, and he does seem so hungry." "No, don't do that," said Julian. "We'll each give him a biscuit- that will be four for him- and we'll still have three left each. That will be plenty for us." "You are really nice," said George. "Tim, don't you think they are nice?" Tim did. He licked everyone and made them laugh. Then he rolled over on his back and let


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

the question. It was not to be thought of for a moment that Bartleby was an immoral person. But what could he be doing there?—copying? Nay again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently decorous person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would by any secular occupation violate the proprieties of the day. Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless curiosity, at last I returned to the door. Without hindrance I inserted my key, opened it, and entered. Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked round anxiously, peeped behind his screen; but it was very plain that he was gone. Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my office, and that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat of a rickety old sofa in one corner bore the faint impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor’s hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage! For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad fancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain—led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scrivener’s pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering winding sheet. Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby’s closed desk, the key


see anything, didn’t hear anything, never saw a soul inside that house other than her family.” That’s at least one lie on Lenora’s part. She saw Berniece, who caught her in the kitchen with blood on her hands as she grabbed a knife. Yet that doesn’t make sense. If Lenora was indeed guilty, how could there be blood on her hands before she fetched the knife? That’s only possible if more than one knife had been used. “What about the weapon?” I say. “They never found it, right?” “Correct.” “Were the police certain only one knife was used?” “As certain as they could be,” Detective Vick says. “No other knife seemed to be missing from the kitchen, and the stab wounds on both Winston and Evangeline Hope were roughly the same width, suggesting only one weapon was used.” “Did they notice anything out of the ordinary about the place? Anything at all?” “Just that Virginia Hope’s room had recently been cleaned. One of the cops smelled floor polish when they brought her upstairs.” I touch my temples, the headache growing. It’s so bad I’m surprised my skull hasn’t fractured yet, forming a crack as big as the one now running across the terrace at Hope’s End. “Since they couldn’t prove—or disprove—that Ricardo did it, and since they couldn’t do the same with Lenora, the case just stalled?” “Correct,” Detective Vick says. “Sound familiar?” Anger flashes through me like lightning. Electric. Searing. “Fuck you,” I tell Detective Vick, which might be illegal. I’m not up to date on laws against swearing at police detectives. If it is a crime, Detective Vick makes no move to do anything about it as I yank open the door to my Escort and slide behind the wheel. “I don’t blame you, you know,” he says before I can slam the door shut. “Your mother was suffering. I understand that. My own parents suffered when their time came. But I didn’t break the law to try to end it.” “Neither did I.” I’m on the verge of tears, and I don’t know if it’s from rage or grief or the fact that everything about the past six months has been too damn much. When I got to Hope’s End, I threw myself into learning Lenora’s story because I was desperate to change my own pathetic existence by focusing on someone else’s. But then I found Mary dead, and things have only spiraled since then. “I didn’t make my mother take those pills,” I say, swiping at a tear before it can fall because I’ll be damned if I cry in front of Detective Vick. “She killed herself. Mary didn’t. And someone smarter than you would understand that.” The detective’s nostrils flare. The only sign I’ve gotten to him. Unlike me, he knows how to keep his emotions in check. “Kit, for the last time, Mary Milton wasn’t murdered.” “How can you be so sure of that?” Detective Vick removes a piece of paper from inside his jacket. A photocopy of a page made ragged and faint from water


spot a pair of fuzzy brown slippers peeking out from the closet. “Oh my god. Is that a Hobbit costume?” “Aaaaaand we’re leaving,” he says, doing his best to shoulder me toward the hall. “Does it still fit? Can you try it on? I promise I’ll never ask for anything ever again—” I’m still laughing when he shuts the door behind us. * * * The official Finnegan Walsh tour of Reno takes us past his elementary, middle, and high schools and through the casino-dotted downtown, with a stop at what he declares is the good Taco Bell. “Used to hang out here on weekends all the time,” he says when we park at a strip mall. He points at a Barnes & Noble. Next to it is a game shop with a going out of business sale sign hung across the windows. “There, too. Typical suburban kid in the late nineties/early aughts.” “Not a terrible way to grow up.” I take a bite of my bean burrito, then tear open a hot sauce packet and drizzle on some more. “It wasn’t,” he agrees. “Everyone was nice enough, and I never really felt a pull toward Vegas. Plus, we’re less than an hour from Lake Tahoe.” “You come out here often?” “Not often enough,” he says. “Every few months or so. And I always do the Reno con—it’s the first one I ever went to as a fan.” He gazes out at the parking lot. “There are good memories here, but some not-so-great ones, too. I can’t erase my dad completely.” “I’m so sorry. You deserved so much better than that.” If we were different people, I’d reach over and place a hand on his. Reassure him more than I can do in my capacity as ghostwriter. Because that’s all I am, I unwrap another burrito. By the time we make it back to Finn’s mom’s, it’s nearly nine o’clock and my body’s stuck in another time zone. Sondra’s at the kitchen table, fine-tuning her address for Saturday’s Shabbat service, Galileo in her lap and the others perched on blankets and dog beds in the adjacent living room. Tomorrow will be a writing day, and then Saturday will be packed: services, con, meeting up with Finn’s friends. My eyes are heavy, but I don’t want to assume I’m sleeping here just because Finn is, so I left my suitcase in the hallway. “Sorry, could I get the address for an Uber?” I ask. Finn pauses at the kitchen sink, where he’s been inspecting a glass of water before filling it. “What do you need an Uber for?” “Oh—a hotel?” “Don’t be silly,” Sondra says. “You’ll stay here with us. We have a guest room made up already.” “I don’t want to intrude.” Sondra gives me her best mom-side-eye. “Honey. You’re not intruding. Besides, isn’t this better than a cold, soulless hotel?” “Stay,” Finn says, and then adds, “please,” with a heart-melting smile all his directors must have loved. It’s strange, how sweet the word stay sounds in his voice. The way it


the single-stall bathroom, its line snaking halfway around the back of the club, and breathed a sigh of relief that I was wearing urine-absorbing socks and sensible, closed-toed shoes. Yes, I pissed my pants at the club, but that was VERY COOL back then because it made me seem fun and spontaneous—like it was my choice, and not an involuntary consequence of my managing to avoid death these many years. I thought the spoils of reaching middle age relatively unscathed would be better than unrelenting anxiety and loss of control over my various nerves, joints, limbs, and bodily fluids. I wouldn’t have taken so many antibiotics if I’d known I was just gonna grow up to fall the fuck apart the same year I finally nursed my credit score over the seven hundred line. What is the point of taking handfuls of unsexy vitamins and paying my secured card on time if I’m extending a life spent examining stains on the clothes I wore all day while wondering aloud, “What hole did that come out of ?” What I wouldn’t give to have that old urethral elasticity back. What misery it is, being a person and existing in a human body over whose chemicals and hormones and cells you have very little control. With all the evidence you’ve gathered for this experiment otherwise known as life on this dying ball of garbage, level with me: Would you choose this again? You spend your whole youth eating french fries and fucking up and crying, praying for stability and confidence, and then, as soon as you get close to something resembling self-sufficiency, your nerves get bad and you spend the better part of most days covered in at least a microscopic bit of your own waste. While you contemplate your mortality and endless human suffering, weighing it against [name me one good thing], I present to you an exhaustive list of things I’ve peed on over the past few years: Seat 3B on Delta flight 2734 to LAX I used to never have to pee on flights, due to a carefully calibrated combination of claustrophobic terror and forced dehydration, but now, every time an airplane touches down with me on it, a little pee squirts out to christen my arrival in a new location. The recumbent elliptical machine at the YMCA I had to buy special “moisture-wicking” compression leggings because it’s nearly impossible for me to engage my core (My WHAT?!) while also pushing pedals at a super-high resistance for forty-five minutes and trying to read the closed captioning on whatever episode of NCIS is playing on all the wall-mounted TVs and securing the contents of my bladder safely inside my body. Honestly, I would just quit going, but it helps my shitty knees, and you gotta see fourteen specialists to get so much as a Tylenol these days, and fuck that. So sometimes I leave the gym with a very “sweaty butt.” Anyway, it could be worse, I could be emptying my entire bladder onto a squeaky wood floor to a Pitbull song


had never again been afraid. The fond memory caused Sophie a pang of sadness as the harsh reality of the murder gripped her again. Grand-pre is gone. She pictured the cryptex under the divan and wondered if Leigh Teabing would have any idea how to open it. Or if we even should ask him. Sophie's grandfather's final words had instructed her to find Robert Langdon. He had said nothing about involving anyone else. We needed somewhere to hide, Sophie said, deciding to trust Robert's judgment. "Sir Robert!" a voice bellowed somewhere behind them. "I see you travel with a maiden." Langdon stood up. Sophie jumped to her feet as well. The voice had come from the top of a curled staircase that snaked up to the shadows of the second floor. At the top of the stairs, a form moved in the shadows, only his silhouette visible. "Good evening," Langdon called up. "Sir Leigh, may I present Sophie Neveu." "An honor." Teabing moved into the light. "Thank you for having us," Sophie said, now seeing the man wore metal leg braces and used crutches. He was coming down one stair at a time. "I realize it's quite late." "It is so late, my dear, it's early." He laughed. "Vous n'tes pas Amricaine?" Sophie shook her head. "Parisienne." "Your English is superb." "Thank you. I studied at the Royal Holloway." "So then, that explains it." Teabing hobbled lower through the shadows. "Perhaps Robert told you I schooled just down the road at Oxford." Teabing fixed Langdon with a devilish smile. "Of course, I also applied to Harvard as my safety school." Their host arrived at the bottom of the stairs, appearing to Sophie no more like a knight than Sir Elton John. Portly and ruby-faced, Sir Leigh Teabing had bushy red hair and jovial hazel eyes that seemed to twinkle as he spoke. He wore pleated pants and a roomy silk shirt under a paisley vest. Despite the aluminum braces on his legs, he carried himself with a resilient, vertical dignity that seemed more a by-product of noble ancestry than any kind of conscious effort. Teabing arrived and extended a hand to Langdon. "Robert, you've lost weight." Langdon grinned. "And you've found some." Teabing laughed heartily, patting his rotund belly. "Touch. My only carnal pleasures these days seem to be culinary." Turning now to Sophie, he gently took her 153 hand, bowing his head slightly, breathing lightly on her fingers, and diverting his eyes. "M'lady." Sophie glanced at Langdon, uncertain whether she'd stepped back in time or into a nuthouse. The butler who had answered the door now entered carrying a tea service, which he arranged on a table in front of the fireplace. "This is Rmy Legaludec," Teabing said, "my manservant." The slender butler gave a stiff nod and disappeared yet again. "Rmy is Lyonais," Teabing whispered, as if it were an unfortunate disease. "But he does sauces quite nicely." Langdon looked amused. "I would have thought you'd import an English staff?" "Good heavens, no! I would not wish a British chef


away. Then Clare again stole a chink of light from the window, and they shared another meal, till by-and-by they were enveloped in the shades of night which they had no candle to disperse. LVIII The night was strangely solemn and still. In the small hours she whispered to him the whole story of how he had walked in his sleep with her in his arms across the Froom stream, at the imminent risk of both their lives, and laid her down in the stone coffin at the ruined abbey. He had never known of that till now. "Why didn't you tell me next day?" he said. "It might have prevented much misunderstanding and woe." "Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what tomorrow has in store?" But it apparently had no sorrow. The morning was wet and foggy, and Clare, rightly informed that the caretaker only opened the windows on fine days, ventured to creep out of their chamber, and explore the house, leaving Tess asleep. There was no food on the premises, but there was water, and he took advantage of the fog to emerge from the mansion, and fetch tea, bread, and butter from a shop in a little place two miles beyond, as also a small tin kettle and spirit-lamp, that they might get fire without smoke. His re-entry awoke her; and they breakfasted on what he had brought. They were indisposed to stir abroad, and the day passed, and the night following, and the next, and next; till, almost without their being aware, five days had slipped by in absolute seclusion, not a sight or sound of a human being disturbing their peacefulness, such as it was. The changes of the weather were their only events, the birds of the New Forest their only company. By tacit consent they hardly once spoke of any incident of the past subsequent to their wedding-day. The gloomy intervening time seemed to sink into chaos, over which the present and prior times closed as if it never had been. Whenever he suggested that they should leave their shelter, and go forwards towards Southampton or London, she showed a strange unwillingness to move. "Why should we put an end to all that's sweet and lovely!" she deprecated. "What must come will come." And, looking through the shutter-chink: "All is trouble outside there; inside here content." He peeped out also. It was quite true; within was affection, union, error forgiven: outside was the inexorable. "And--and," she said, pressing her cheek against his, "I fear that what you think of me now may not last. I do not wish to outlive your present feeling for me. I would rather not. I would rather be dead and buried when the time comes for you to despise me, so that it may never be known to me that you despised me." "I cannot ever despise you." "I also hope that. But considering what my life had been I cannot see why any


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

the alcoves holding all those Bleeding Gods shimmering like miniature suns. “Are you implying you aren’t up to the task?” The implications of that didn’t need to be spelled out. Burnt Isles if she was lucky, pyre if she wasn’t. “No.” Lore shook her head. “No, I’m up to it.” “Good.” August turned his back on her and strode down the hallway, the orange-and-gold cloak he’d worn at morning prayers fluttering behind him. He didn’t give her a deadline for a report, she noticed. Apparently, he was content to wait until she had something concrete to tell him. The doors to the vaults closed softly behind her. When Lore turned, Anton peered at her from his one gleaming eye. Then, with a tilt of his chin, he asked, “How old are you, Lore?” Her brows drew together, confusion bringing a quick answer. “Twenty-three.” “And your birthday is near midsummer, correct? Your year of Consecration.” It still made her uneasy that he knew so much about her. Lore nodded again and started walking toward the end of the gilded hall, toward the rest of the Citadel. Anton fell into easy step beside her. “We’ll have to make sure you’re given a proper ceremony, since you’re part of the court now. Even if it is currently under false pretenses.” “That’s really not necessary.” “Oh, I think it is.” He swept past her in a rustle of pale robes, opening the door before she could reach it. “Bastian is probably out on the green somewhere. Go find him.” With that order, Anton glided away into the depths of the Citadel, headed to whatever holy duties occupied him during the day, leaving Lore alone in the vault corridor. For a moment, she just stood there, among all those stone Apolliuses with empty chests and hands full of garnet blood. Then, Lore drifted to the end of the hallway, out into the expanse of the Citadel proper. She retraced her steps, going back to the door that led to the green space and the North Sanctuary. No one else was in the halls, all the courtiers dispersed to wherever they spent their innumerable leisure hours. Just as well. Her mind was too tangled up to make a convincing duke’s cousin. She’d been given a direct order to find Bastian, but she’d take her time. She had scads of it, apparently. The sun was high in the sky, now, and bright enough to make her squint. Lore wandered off the path immediately, her feet pointing toward the manicured forest to the left of the cobblestones. Not a real forest—it was planned down to the leaf, designed just so, nothing wild about it. But it was close enough. Lore stopped once she was under the trees, closed her eyes, took a deep breath of green and dirt. It smelled so clean within the walls of the Citadel, a difference she hadn’t really noticed until now. She was used to the scents of people crowded together, of sea brine, of soot and trash and grime. But here, the air smelled


and possibly asking for another piece! "You'll be using the best tea set, of course, Marilla," she said. "Can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses?" "I think that's all nonsense," sniffed Marilla. "In my opinion it's the eatables that matter and not flummery decorations." "Mrs. Barry had HER table decorated," said Anne, who was not entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, "and the minister paid her an elegant compliment. He said it was a feast for the eye as well as the palate." "Well, do as you like," said Marilla, who was quite determined not to be surpassed by Mrs. Barry or anybody else. "Only mind you leave enough room for the dishes and the food." Anne laid herself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion that should leave Mrs. Barry's nowhere. Having abundance of roses and ferns and a very artistic taste of her own, she made that tea table such a thing of beauty that when the minister and his wife sat down to it they exclaimed in chorus over it loveliness. "It's Anne's doings," said Marilla, grimly just; and Anne felt that Mrs. Allan's approving smile was almost too much happiness for this world. Matthew was there, having been inveigled into the party only goodness and Anne knew how. He had been in such a state of shyness and nervousness that Marilla had given him up in despair, but Anne took him in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best clothes and white collar and talked to the minister not uninterestingly. He never said a word to Mrs. Allan, but that perhaps was not to be expected. All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne's layer cake was passed. Mrs. Allan, having already been helped to a bewildering variety, declined it. But Marilla, seeing the disappointment on Anne's face, said smilingly: "Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allan. Anne made it on purpose for you." "In that case I must sample it," laughed Mrs. Allan, helping herself to a plump triangle, as did also the minister and Marilla. Mrs. Allan took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily ate away at it. Marilla saw the expression and hastened to taste the cake. "Anne Shirley!" she exclaimed, "what on earth did you put into that cake?" "Nothing but what the recipe said, Marilla," cried Anne with a look of anguish. "Oh, isn't it all right?" "All right! It's simply horrible. Mr. Allan, don't try to eat it. Anne, taste it yourself. What flavoring did you use?" "Vanilla," said Anne, her face scarlet with modification after tasting the cake. "Only vanilla. Oh, Marilla, it must have been the baking powder. I had my suspicions of that bak-" "Baking powder fiddlesticks! Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you used." Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially filled with a brown liquid and labeled


poured over her face. “Listen to me.” Clytemnestra doesn’t know how to explain, how to make her sister understand. “You must do what you want, but do it in the shadows. Don’t let others see how happy you are.” Timandra is silent. Outside, an owl cries and the leaves rustle. “Do you know who Achilles is?” Timandra finally says. Clytemnestra nods. Achilles, son of Peleus, king of the tiny Phthia and blessed by the gods. He is said to be the greatest hero of his generation. Agamemnon often speaks of the man with unease, though he has never met him. “They say he lives with his companion, Patroclus,” Timandra says. “They eat together, play together, sleep together. Everyone knows about them. But this doesn’t taint Achilles’s reputation. He is still aristos Achaion.” She uses the words for “best of the Greeks.” But you are not aristos Achaion, Clytemnestra thinks. Instead she says, “They are men, and you are a woman.” “What difference does it make? It didn’t change anything in Sparta.” “We are not in Sparta anymore.” Timandra is pacing the room, raising her voice. “You want me to be a servant to my husband just because that is what the people expect me to be?” Clytemnestra waits to find the right words, as if pulling them out of deep darkness. “You were born free and you will always be free, no matter what others tell you. But you must see what is around you and learn to bend it to your will before you are the one who is bent.” Timandra stops pacing. Her dark eyes are inscrutable, but then Clytemnestra sees a flash in them, like a torch that is suddenly lit in the blackness. “I will not bring Chrysanthe, then,” Timandra says. * * * Clytemnestra sleeps dreamlessly. When she wakes at dawn, the air is rich with the scent of summer, and her mind is filled with memories. Her father talking to envoys in the megaron, offering her fruit and making sure she listened carefully. Afterward, when the men had left, he would say, “Clytemnestra, what would you have done?” Her father watching her first fight in the gymnasium. She was six and shy, but his presence gave her strength. “People aren’t always as strong as they look,” he had told her. “Strength comes from many different things, and one of those is purpose.” She had won the fight, and he had given her a brief smile. Tyndareus eating next to her brothers, laughing at their jokes, occasionally scolding Timandra for giving too much food to the dogs. Even when he was absorbed in someone else’s story, he would always look for Clytemnestra, just for the briefest moment. Sorrow falls upon her, heavy, like snow. She has loved him, hated him, wished him dead. And now that he is, she has to go back to pray for him. But gods don’t listen to women who curse their father, who loathe and dishonor him. For a daughter like her, there are no gods to pray to. 16 Burning of


seem like a reach now,” he said, “but I do think you’re right to consider them. I’m sure that at least a few will want to consider you.” Should I have been more worried about leaving my family? I was not privy to all the details of what they were facing, but I know there were signs I missed, or perhaps thought too little of, even as I scrambled to compensate. My mother was still recovering, emotionally and physically, from her surgeries. My father had his own medical issues and worked long, unpredictable hours at the restaurant. They were often unable to cook, so I learned how to make a few simple meals—meat loaf and baked potatoes, beef stew and bean soup, eggs and waffles, Stroganoff made with cream-of-mushroom soup, pasta with marinara sauce from a jar—and supplemented with fast food and TV dinners bought with money from my minimum-wage job, where I spent fifteen to twenty hours each week. The rest of what I earned went to clothes and shoes, gas for the car, the contact lenses I preferred to glasses, weekday breakfast and lunch; I knew nothing about free or reduced-price meals at school, perhaps because my family disapproved of what they considered “handouts” or perhaps because none of us ever thought to ask. I was able to cover my own SAT and AP exam and college application fees—which I should have been exempt from, though I didn’t know that, either—and pay for my graduation cap and gown. One of my aunts sent me cash whenever she could and purchased the computer I needed for school. If I’d started skipping class, if my grades had dropped, I’m sure someone at school would have checked on me or tried to speak with my parents. But I was a straight-A honors student who looked like a model-minority stereotype, and no one, including me, thought I needed help. If anyone outside my family had asked how I was doing, I would have said fine, kind of stressed about grades, looking forward to graduation, and I would have meant it. And yet when I came home from school or work to study, I don’t remember feeling anything like the heady mix of curiosity and determination that would spur me on in college. What I remember is the fear of unraveling, a sense of quiet dread, and my mother telling me that if I didn’t slow down and relax, I was going to get an ulcer. “I’ll relax when I’m an adult,” I told her, meaning, I’ll relax when I’m out of here. When pressed, I might admit that I was afraid of failure, but what I was really afraid of was that nothing would change, and I would remain stuck in this place where I knew I didn’t fit. No one in my family was sure how to advise me on getting into college. But I had been asking my guidance counselor for advice for years, and my mother had also heard about a consultant who worked with local students. She might have given


inspired by the suffragettes, the modern women who were going to achieve equality and the freedom to pursue their own happiness. With the stroke of a pen, we were locked up. Troublesome women with inconvenient ideas. ‘How long have you been here? You look so young.’ ‘Three years. I’m twenty-two.’ My tears spilled forth once again. It all seemed so hopeless. She gave my hand a firm squeeze. ‘You have to be strong for the baby,’ she said, then got up and undressed before climbing into the other bed. I lay down on the thin mattress and looked up at the moon shining between the bars on the window. Mary was right. I had to look after my little Rosebud. I would eat the food, go outside and breathe the fresh air into my lungs and keep as healthy as I could. If this was the way it had to be for now, then I would accept it. For her good. I couldn’t let myself get worked up like I did today. I knew it wasn’t good for her. So I would be calm and, when the time came, they would take me to a hospital to have my baby and that would be my chance to escape. Two weeks passed, with every new day identical to the last. One could never have imagined the length of days when there is nothing to do, say or think. The most remarkable feature was the cold. I could see my own breath when I spoke. An elderly woman took a fit one morning at the breakfast table, shivering and convulsing with the cold. She was practically hopping off the bench, such was her suffering. ‘Let her fall on the floor, it’ll teach her a lesson,’ said Nurse Patricia. The nurses wore their overcoats and despite every fibre of my being instructing me to keep quiet, I simply had to speak out. ‘Can you not see that she will perish with the cold in this place? Surely you can spare her some extra clothing?’ ‘She has the same as everyone else.’ And that was the end of that discussion. I gave the woman my cup of hot tea when it came. It wasn’t a great loss, watery as it was and tasting peculiarly of copper. A new woman arrived that day, which gave us all something to focus on. We welcomed her in as best we could and I could now understand the thirst for information that had greeted me when I first arrived. Everyone wanted to know why she was here, mostly to drown out the mind-numbing boredom. I hoped to be proved right by her story – another innocent victim. But we couldn’t make any sense out of what she was saying and before long she was taken away to be treated, whatever that meant. Word came back that she came direct from the courthouse where she had stood accused of drowning her child. She believed it was a changeling, that her real baby was taken by the fairies. I almost got physically


knees, guarding her, is the world’s ugliest cat. Mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash. Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. I le hates me. Or at least distrusts me. Even though it was years ago, I think he still remembers how I tried to drown him in a bucket when Prim brought him home. Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed. But Prim begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of 4 the vermin and he’s a born mouser. Even catches the occa- sional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me. Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love. I swing my legs off the bed and slide into my hunting boots. Supple leather that has molded to my feet. I pull on trousers, a shirt, tuck my long dark braid up into a cap, and grab my fo- rage bag. On the table, under a wooden bowl to protect it from hungry rats and cats alike, sits a perfect little goat cheese wrapped in basil leaves. Prim’s gift to me on reaping day. I put the cheese carefully in my pocket as I slip outside. Our part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam, is usually crawling with coal miners heading out to the morning shift at this hour. Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails, the lines of their sun- ken faces. But today the black cinder streets are empty. Shut- ters on the squat gray houses are closed. The reaping isn’t un- til two. May as well sleep in. If you can. Our house is almost at the edge of the Seam. I only have to pass a few gates to reach the scruffy field called the Meadow. Separating the Meadow from the woods, in fact enclosing all of District 12, is a high chain-link fence topped with barbed- wire loops. In theory, it’s supposed to be electrified twenty- four hours a day as a deterrent to the predators that live in the woods — packs of wild dogs, lone cougars, bears — that used to threaten our streets. But since we’re lucky to get two or 5 three hours of electricity in the evenings, it’s usually safe to touch. Even so, I always take a moment to listen carefully for the hum that means the fence is live. Right now, it’s silent as a stone. Concealed by a clump of bushes, I flatten out on my bel- ly and slide under a two-foot stretch that’s been loose for years. There are several other weak spots in the fence, but this one is so close to home I almost always enter the woods here. As soon as


of gold and silver coins. Clytemnestra can see he likes to tell these stories. She doesn’t care much for myths—she has grown up with her father and brothers, who look at the world with no enchantment or illusion. But Tantalus is a gifted storyteller, so she listens. As he speaks, she is stricken by how wonderful and scary it is to hang on his every word and to wish she could listen to him forever. It is like jumping over the edge of a cliff and falling, her heart racing, yet always longing for more. * * * In the next few days, Clytemnestra watches her parents as she has never done before. When commoners walk in the megaron with their pleas, Leda speaks and gives orders, but only when Tyndareus asks for her opinion. At dinner, when he glances at the servant girls—carelessly enough for his wife to see—Leda drains her wine in silence, though there are sparks in her eyes as if she were ready to catch fire. Clytemnestra sees that her mother challenges her father and that he likes her for it, but only up to a point. Play with the wolf too much, and he’ll rip off your arm. As Clytemnestra watches, she feels like a weaver, spinning each thread, eager to see the final tapestry. She sees that her mother can be two different people and that the best version appears when her father isn’t around. Is this what happens when one falls in love and marries? Clytemnestra wonders. Is this what a woman gives up? All her life, she has been taught courage, strength, resilience, but must those qualities be kept at bay with a husband? But it is also true that her father listens to her when she speaks, and Tantalus looks at her as if she were a goddess. The thoughts burn and flicker, and she tries to drown them. It doesn’t matter what Leda or Tyndareus does. Her grandmother told her she will be queen, and so it will be. She will bow to no one. Her destiny will be what she wants it to be. * * * Her brothers must leave. A heroic expedition, to the rich land of Colchis. A messenger arrives to give the news at dawn, sweat pouring through his tunic after the long trip. Clytemnestra watches him from the terrace as he dismounts from his horse and meets Castor and Polydeuces at the entrance to the palace. They haven’t had any visitors since Tantalus’s arrival, and she is surprised to see that the man lingers by the door to speak to her brothers rather than hurrying inside to meet the king. Later, Castor brings her to the riverbank. He seems lost in thought, and his eyes are dark in the morning light. “That envoy was for you and Polydeuces,” Clytemnestra says. He nods. “We are going to Colchis. We have been called to join a crew of young Greek men.” “Tantalus told me about Colchis,” she says. “A wicked king rules there.” “Aeëtes, yes,” Castor replies. “He


were far-sighted. He held it close, as if he were blind. "Montag! " He jerked about. "Don't stand there, idiot!" The books lay like great mounds of fishes left to dry. The men danced and slipped and fell over them. Titles glittered their golden eyes, falling, gone. "Kerosene! They pumped the cold fluid from the numbered 451 tanks strapped to their shoulders. They coated each book, they pumped rooms full of it. They hurried downstairs, Montag staggered after them in the kerosene fumes. "Come on, woman!" The woman knelt among the books, touching the drenched leather and cardboard, reading the gilt titles with her fingers while her eyes accused Montag. "You can't ever have my books," she said. "You know the law," said Beatty. "Where's your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You've been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now! " She shook her head. "The whole house is going up;" said Beatty, The men walked clumsily to the door. They glanced back at Montag, who stood near the woman. "You're not leaving her here?" he protested. "She won't come." "Force her, then!" Beatty raised his hand in which was concealed the igniter. "We're due back at the house. Besides, these fanatics always try suicide; the pattern's familiar." Montag placed his hand on the woman's elbow. "You can come with me." "No," she said. "Thank you, anyway." "I'm counting to ten," said Beatty. "One. Two." "Please," said Montag. "Go on," said the woman. "Three. Four." "Here." Montag pulled at the woman. The woman replied quietly, "I want to stay here" "Five. Six." "You can stop counting," she said. She opened the fingers of one hand slightly and in the palm of the hand was a single slender object. An ordinary kitchen match. The sight of it rushed the men out and down away from the house. Captain Beatty, keeping his dignity, backed slowly through the front door, his pink face burnt and shiny from a thousand fires and night excitements. God, thought Montag, how true! Always at night the alarm comes. Never by day! Is it because the fire is prettier by night? More spectacle, a better show? The pink face of Beatty now showed the faintest panic in the door. The woman's hand twitched on the single matchstick. The fumes of kerosene bloomed up about her. Montag felt the hidden book pound like a heart against his chest. "Go on," said the woman, and Montag felt himself back away and away out of the door, after Beatty, down the steps, across the lawn, where the path of kerosene lay like the track of some evil snail. On the front porch where she had come to weigh them quietly with her eyes, her quietness a condemnation, the woman stood motionless. Beatty flicked his fingers to spark the kerosene. He was too late. Montag gasped. The woman on the porch reached out with contempt for them all, and struck


he lacks the fortitude to do what he knows he should. He is no doubt thinking about his second wife, the stunning Giselle, whose great beauty makes him the envy of other men, and of his first wife, Martha, whose looks were as common as her husband’s and who died in a tragic accident that not only freed Julian but also enriched him with an inheritance of thirty-two million dollars. Calaphas and Grantworth both know to whom he owes his good fortune, though they have never discussed the matter; Calaphas is willing to speak the truth about what happened to Martha, but her widower dares not raise the subject. Grantworth lifts his chin, and his nostrils flare like those of a show horse entering a dressage competition, and he looks down at Calaphas with what he imagines is withering contempt. “Woodbine and Santana at nine o’clock.” He turns and makes his way through the restaurant. He is tall, slim, with the ramrod posture of a guard at Buckingham Palace, his exquisitely tailored suit the summation of him. He thinks he’s good at the game, but he doesn’t understand the rules of the simulation in which they exist. TRIGGER In the library of the ocean-view Corona del Mar house, all the books are as white as the bleached sycamore shelves on which they are ordered. The spines feature no titles, no authors’ names, no publishers’ logos. Michael examines several and discovers that the original jackets were replaced by thick but flexible white vellum trimmed to fit each volume precisely. Thrillers by Janet Evanovich and David Baldacci, novels by John Irving and Don DeLillo, romances by Nora Roberts, and nonfiction tomes on a variety of topics are shelved with no regard to subject or genre. They seem to have been bought by the pound from a used-book dealer, not to be read, but to represent the concept of a book. Shape without form. Shade without color. This is the idea of a library as it might be in the virtual world of a shooter game where the avatars are too busy killing and being killed to have any time to read, where the only purpose of a library is to serve as the scene of yet another violent encounter during which the all-white decor will be vividly splattered with gore. Among the data triggers that Michael has planted in systems connected to the internet, one is at the ISA. It notifies him any time his name and that of Durand Calaphas appear within two hundred characters of each other in written reports or within thirty seconds of each other in recorded statements or conversations. As now. Blue neon flows through his mind’s eye, providing a location in the ISA archives. Standing with book in hand, he mentally ravels the blue light toward him, as if he is reeling in a fish. He opens archived audio of a conversation between Calaphas and Julian Grantworth, the deputy director of the ISA, conducted mere minutes earlier and just now transmitted by Grantworth to his one superior at


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

said quietly, "I think you must have made a mistake. I don't think I can be a wizard." To his surprise, Hagrid chuckled. "Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?" Harry looked into the fire. Now he came to think about it...every odd thing that had ever made his aunt and uncle furious with him had happened when he, Harry, had been upset or angry...chased by Dudley's gang, he had somehow found himself out of their reach...dreading going to school with that ridiculous haircut, he'd managed to make it grow back...and the very last time Dudley had hit him, hadn't he got his revenge, without even realizing he was doing it? Hadn't he set a boa constrictor on him? Harry looked back at Hagrid, smiling, and saw that Hagrid was positively beaming at him. "See?" said Hagrid. "Harry Potter, not a wizard -- you wait, you'll be right famous at Hogwarts." But Uncle Vernon wasn't going to give in without a fight. "Haven't I told you he's not going?" he hissed. "He's going to Stonewall High and he'll be grateful for it. I've read those letters and he needs all sorts of rubbish -- spell books and wands and -- " "If he wants ter go, a great Muggle like you won't stop him," growled Hagrid. "Stop Lily an' James Potter' s son goin' ter Hogwarts! Yer mad. His name's been down ever since he was born. He's off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won't know himself. He'll be with youngsters of his own sort, fer a change, an' he'll be under the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had Albus Dumbled -- " "I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL To TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!" yelled Uncle Vernon. But he had finally gone too far. Hagrid seized his umbrella and whirled it over his head, "NEVER," he thundered, " -- INSULT -- ALBUS -- DUMBLEDORE -- IN -- FRONT -- OF -- ME!" He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley -- there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, a sharp squeal, and the next second, Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig's tail poking through a hole in his trousers. Uncle Vernon roared. Pulling Aunt Petunia and Dudley into the other room, he cast one last terrified look at Hagrid and slammed the door behind them. Hagrid looked down at his umbrella and stroked his beard. "Shouldn'ta lost me temper," he said ruefully, "but it didn't work anyway. Meant ter turn him into a pig, but I suppose he was so much like a pig anyway there wasn't much left ter do." He cast a sideways look at Harry under his bushy eyebrows. "Be grateful if yeh didn't mention that ter anyone at Hogwarts," he said. "I'm -- er --