The corridor was longer than it had been, but that was only because I was walking it slowly. I had a key in my pocket. I knew this the way you know things in the morning before you are properly awake, not by checking but by a kind of trust, and I trusted it completely,…

She’s dancing in a summer field giddy with love of Orpheus when a goddamn viper bites her bare ankle. Why not a bee or even, forchristsake, a nasty yellowjacket? She’s instantly dead.

As the family gathered for cocktail hour, my nephew asked me to bring him a virgin daquiri—and I answered that I could, but by the time I brought it to him, it would just be a daquiri.