Larry lies on top of her, he kisses her, his lips, she thinks, are dry, but she prefers dry to wet because overly wet in the mouth is never a good thing.

It came from the animal shelter, seizing and shivering, with eyes almost bigger than its head. Eyes that followed Pearl like it couldn’t stuff the whole picture of her in its tiny skull.

"Because of the way our society is structured, a lot of people have to climb hard to get to anywhere reasonable in their lives, losing fingernails and a sense of dignity on the way up."

Now, these explosions announced, political bribes and propaganda weren't going to be enough to push things through. There would need to be survival from blunt force trauma and fear tactics, a relentless forward march

The funeral was a blast. One helluva time. We all had the time of our lives. Well, all of us except Dominic. It pissed me off that Dominic didn’t have fun. After all, he was the center of attention. The whole day was about him, and we spared no expense

There are some, I am told, who never see the dead, though I am as yet unable to believe it.

After this last death, I lose at musical chairs. Rough strangers shove me toward the carved door. Feeling fierce, I yell, “Don't push me!” House racked with noise, smells, rushing, I turn the…

Thank christ for feminst theory and fat good natured shrinks and tall men who stand guard over me with real guns, real bullets.

Listen to me, at the end of all things, and I will tell you her story.

Watering his pansies in their pots with his ridiculous watering can. Sticking his finger in the soil to test the dampness. Obviously nothing on beneath the silk robe. It’s almost fallen loose a dozen times Balding. Maybe in his late forties. S

Johnny puts another whiskey in front of me. Except for him, me, and Petey, the bar's empty. "You hear about that up in Wilmette?" he asks."No, what?" I say."A cougar. People say they saw a cougar.""Bullshit.""No shit. Was in the Sun Times this morning.""Sun Times ain't…

Lady Macbeth goes around moaning “out, out damned spot,” when a well-placed lick would have solved the problem immediately, with no unnecessary and heavy-handed dialogue. Once again, clumsy work.

Keisha was the name she gave us. She said she had no father and no last name. We wrote her down as Keisha B. We already had a Keisha A. She was about twelve though she told us fourteen. Her eyes were older than we dared think. We knew her mother had been murdered and that's…

Down cellar, my father showed me where he kept his beer stash. It was in a cubbyhole under the bulkhead, where Mom never thought to look.

What was it about women that made them know these kinds of things about one another, about people, the way they came together, the future? Crater thought back to Dresden, the exchange student from Holland. She knew things like that.