1834 6 5
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I am in the bad habit of telling people they are the scum of the earth.
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1833108
|
A dark girl, quite poor, maybe three, maybe four, leaned on a statue of a horse and his man. (The rider rode him in place, but as if in a race.) Her dress needed patching, her heart needed smoothing. She'd tried to sell…
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183354
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You know how it is, one day a good friend sends you this long note telling you how-the-hell they are or aren't getting along in the frigging world
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18331913
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perjured like a fickle impulse
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183343
|
She brought the ends of her fingers to her mouth and moistened them in her warm saliva. The whorls of her prints glistened in the harsh light of the room, but it wasn't her own outlines she was interested in raising. His hand lay outstretched in his…
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183361
|
Bit by bit I was traveling away, we thought. Maybe I’d join myself, all together, in Toronto. Or in an industrial coffee can. Or in the closet. “Check the closet,” I pointed.
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183311
|
Right away, like toadstools, there were crackpot theories. The first: that kids out on the lake dock, against fire department warnings...
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183284
|
“I don’t know what’s going on there,” Hank, who hated his name and wanted a more Biblical name because those names (Jeremiah! Matthew! David!)—although common—sound ominous, said as he pointed up to the top of the apartment building that housed the whores
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183294
|
Three hours isn't that long.
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183284
|
At first we envied Tom and Betty’s dancing. Friday nights at The Big Club, Saturdays at Mickey’s, and none of us can remember a time we saw them in the arms of another partner.
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183288
|
Out the window we could see the parking lot and, across the street, the Bijou Moonlight Laundromat.
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18321710
|
Even if your heart is as large as a small car, your tongue as heavy as two grown men—even then—you will have to carry it with you wherever you go.
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183275
|
“It’s a sad thing,” I said, “when a man has to suffer just for getting a little on the side.”
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183220
|
She’s right there in Thirsty’s. In her usual spot. Drinking her usual drink. Yuengling on tap. One after another.
And he’s there too. Behind the bar. Pouring drinks. One after another.
Sometimes they speak. But mostly she orders. He pours. And
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183200
|
She administers the alkaloids slowly,
soaking the muscles in blight,
the body tissue beneath into corrosion.
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183295
|
Hair as black as a Raven’s wing. Dark eyes. You wore a black dress, too, my favorite color.
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183263
|
I can tell you all about rock bottom.
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183288
|
It took all four of his kids to convince my father to pull the plug. Mom's car crash had left her a vegetable, but of course he hung on. Once they withdrew life support, she was gone in ten minutes. The first thing our father said was that he was hungry. He felt…
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1831105
|
Are we like a poem, a short hand of words curtained together, evoking a mood, but in the end, impenetrable? We follow the clues to our lover's heart and what we find isn't him at all but ourselves. We fill every part of his life, every part of his past and even become…
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183176
|
At noon on a weekday in the off season, when the trickle of tourists who wandered into the Mermaid Curio Shoppe had died out completely, she walked in with wet hair, leaving tiny puddles on the floorboards.
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183100
|
It seems every time we get together, Seiko is there. She just started working in Keiko's department and now they're always together. I think Keiko feels responsible for Seiko. Like if Seiko's not getting any, it's bad manners for Keiko to do it.
|
183100
|
The ice in Mum’s drink clinked as she rolled the glass across her forehead. “Ith that a gay thing or ith that a vampire thing? ’Coth I’m finding thith all a bit confuthing.”
|
183100
|
From the moment they had decided to come until the present, each seated guest had been parading one faceless male possibility after another through her curious mind. Would he be strong? Handsome? Ugly? Crippled? The possibilities were endless...
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183133
|
People ask me sometimes what it’s like to meet your wife when you’re six years old, and I have to admit now that I don’t really understand the question. Marla and I, we were just friends for most of that time. She made me laugh. I let her crib off my math
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183121
|
He had expected more -- at least his grandfather's classic Packard touring car.
|
183141
|
Leo, leo, leo, leo, the word itself imprinted on my brain, carved with a pearl handled blade into my cerebral cortex, into the medulla, burrowed deep into my dreams, I miss your kissing.
|
183111
|
Almost 24 hours ago in Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden was sleeping just as he had slept every night for the hundreds of days prior; comfortable in a million dollar compound with his son and advisors around him...
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1831117
|
Kramer wraps himself around Kramer’s legs, from behind, then lifts him and tips him up and over and down, per their rehearsed routine.
|
183173
|
Roanne banged the chiva, turned tricks, and ran out of road.
|
183010
|
I’ve been here before.
it wasn’t you though—
it was her before you,
and then she before her …
before you.
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