2175 8 4
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“Can I?” Lily asked.
I gave her a nod. She tore at the package with greedy fingers. As the paper fell away to reveal yet another self-help volume, Lily cocked her head in a gesture of confusion and curiosity. Following her gaze to the lipstick-red
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2174 19 13
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On the bed he tickled her until she was crying with laughter. And then the tickles became caresses, the fingers, lips.
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2174 0 0
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The calls were going through her as if her whole head had become a wireless receiver. She absolutely did not understand how or why that was happening, but the physical evidence was impossible to ignore.
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2174 5 2
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He stands. Shoes for dashing, and he could dash, if the audience would stand for it, through one of two exits, beneath one of three wreaths. This year, the year of the Millennium, the wreaths seem dark and Germanic. The stage seems like a Great Hall set for a solitary…
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2174 1 3
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I’m at the kitchen sink washing down pills when they bump up my driveway in a blue Toyota pick up, its bed eaten through with rust so bad I can see past the holes in the body to the frame.
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2173 18 10
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1. a bone to pick"It seems to be accepted nowadays more than ever that killing,individual and mass killing,is the order of the day;it is accepted."--Henry MillerWhy can't you leave well enough alone just long enough for it to make its own miraculous escape…
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2173 5 3
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So she leans over the patio table like that model in that magazine ad and then takes a sip of her blended coffee drink as if a director had said to pretend the straw is a penis. As if this director only just shouted, “And you're a dirty, dirty girl, and
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2172 8 5
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Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get where you need to be.
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2172 6 3
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“Hello, this is Natalie Silverman, I’ve been tying to get my prescription filled for over a week. ... Maybe you recall, you did my brain surgery last spring? I’m sorry that there’s still a balance of over eight thousand dollars. I hope you don’t hold tha
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2171 8 7
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Walk alone at night, quietly. Pause for eye contact with raccoons and night cats, your drunk self, and lights in the graveyard. Don't apologize for it in the morning. Instead of the shame you feel for one time acting selfishly and chasing a future, say…
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2171 4 1
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Joyce Addleberg hated sleeping alone, so when her husband died in his sleep one night, it was only natural that she kept him around.
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2169 3 0
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I came down with polio on September 15, 1953, a mild, smoky day drawing close to autumn outside of Chicago — which also happened to be the exact date of my parents' twenty-first wedding anniversary. Only six months later the Salk vaccine was already b
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2168 22 10
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The Count was used to boredom but he had reached the point where he was even bored with boredom.
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2168 3 2
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"So, is this the datgum exit?"
"Grumphfr exit fregerrock." (This response means either yes, it is, I told you that ten miles ago, or, no it's not, I told you that ten miles ago, depending if it’s the right exit or not.)
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2168 9 5
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I guess it’s extremely difficult to be a decent human being in all aspects of your life.
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2167 24 16
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He would lean on his window sill in the evening and watch the whores. They wore gaudy clothes and too much makeup.
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2167 7 4
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Teddy laughs like a machine gun. People back away when they hear him. Every time I see him at work, I try to make his skinny body rattle. I would never back away.
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2166 4 2
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My ghost has already been places I'll never see.
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2166 7 5
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The base of the monastery before him, he let her go into a warm updraft and she cascaded out and up, never falling as she rode the tiger into her next.
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2166 0 0
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The next day, John's kneecaps looked like Tennessee Pride Real Country Sausage. The bandage on his head kept coming loose, having to be tucked in, and he was suffering the Stone Mountain of hangovers.
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2165 19 6
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He was entirely guilty of what he had done and wanted that to be acknowledged and understood by the arresting officer.
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2165 0 0
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So we waited for it to get dark. I smelled her there beside me against the tree, and fell asleep and dreamed of an unbombed stone church whose steeple was so high it pierced the clouds. It's time, came a voice from one of the back pews. “It's…
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2164 3 3
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I got your card in the mail via my ex-wife in Saskatoon. On it you wonder where I am, if I am still writing, and if I have any stories I would send for you to look at because you think I should be published, too.
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2164 0 0
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“… and that concludes my presentation. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.”
Meixu Liao smiled and turned her hands out, palms upwards. Americans typically saw this combination of facial expression and body language as conveyin
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2164 3 1
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I stumbled out of the Ten Bells pub, still a bit tipsy from the absinthe, but had a clear vision of what I wanted to have happen this night. The air was cold on my rosy cheeks, so I shielded my face…
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2163 6 5
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Because it seems never to be beginning, always picking up in the middle with it’s long resonant tones, which themselves begin as if they’ve always been. Maybe that’s why we love old, sacred music. And by we I, of course, mean my two-year-old Charlie and m
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2163 3 1
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Polo could sense the tension with his group. He was unsure what the creatures would do to them.
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2163 5 6
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Being a grandparent is most joyous when deliberately subversive.
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2163 8 8
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Lucky bastard, he gets Glamour Puss and I get lady wrestler who's giving off the vibe she'll bludgeon me to death with her Bible if I make one false move.
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2163 2 0
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I wore a padded bra. Proud of my tits. D. ordered a Bloody May, I had a vodka tonic. After the second drink I slipped out into the fog, and smoked a little weed. I could see Long Island College Hospital across the street. To my right, the BQE rose up
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