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.

"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."

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…

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.

On the way over, on the ship, I met a girl from Cleveland.

Miss Dolan was different in the way she wore her short, curly hair, and in the way she swung her long, well toned arms as she walked so flawlessly across the classroom.

I taught Polly to turn on a flashlight with his nose. It became his favorite occupation and he'd sit for hours with the light between his paws, watching the things it lit—sometimes jumping up to lick the wall. He'd shine it on our daughter's…

It’s true enough my status as honorary male has come in handy in my profession, but I never considered matters of the flesh. I feel a surge of warmth between my thighs as if a cock is dangling there, thick and florid. The sensation is oddly exciting.

You are just another and I am only me. I give you full permission to be everything I don’t want you to be. In fact, I insist.

In her cleavage, Mark is able to discern a golden heart with the image of an arrow piercing it. A bow is super-imposed over both. “I see you are a devotee of Cupid.” Mark states. “I notice that you are a follower of Bacchus.” Diana winks.

I made him stop at an AM-PM. We bought a bag of barbecue chips and a yellow rose. Those days, we were testing our keels, sloshing against whatever rose most wicked. On the way to Beth Anne's apartment, we passed a man on the shoulder heaving a couch back

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.

I’ll tell you what I think, I think Their hopes of a brush with love Is what keeps the simple cricket Awake all night If you find a baby cricket on its back Fallen on the sidewalk Struggling with its legs In the air Help it to its fee

Then it got quiet again, the kind of quiet that fills a car even with the radio on and the highway ticking away and the corn flying past regimented and silk tasseled.

The man looked at him for a moment, as if he didn’t understand him, “Mr. Wallace, you have a genuine miracle in your bathroom. This isn’t something that just wraps up.”