91 6 4
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Miranda tripped, and her folio went flying through the air, above the sidewalk, near the Cathedral. All her scores went fluttering into the trees like dozens of white doves coming to rest in the leaves and limbs. Some of them caught the wind, and went cir
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7762
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She went right by, picked up the waiting Grande, no foam, soy. Not heels: boots. The kind of skirt men only see in visions. The blouse looked like silk, the pearls seemed real. Too early to tell. Hermès, no hat. Her hand bore the trademark beret.
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5521
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When I say she's magic, no-one ever believes me. They expect a mist swirling around her, a face wrapped in light, rays on her gown, or a woman rising naked from the foam, a fire stirring near her when she stirs. But it's not like that at all. It's a small
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6353
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The same prompt girl mingled with us at intermission. We stood around, drinking cheap wine at three fifty a cup. I was wrongly dressed, the women were flowers of gems and silk. They looked right through me: they looked at her.
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5541
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There would be dancing and music, stolen laughter underneath the lanterns, a thousand betrayals and scenes of forgiveness before midnight. But not yet.
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4633
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In the opened wings of cranes, in the single branch of a cherry, black against the gray rock, I saw a life that was nearly mine, but half a world away, a thousand years removed. The birdsong was only imagined.
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3800
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She was their coloratura, their rare bird, their gem. When she sang, I understood nothing, but I pictured a young woman, standing beneath a willow by the streambank in Spring
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4544
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It moved out over us, the way light moves over the landscape in a winter's dawn, the way a snowmelt river flows back into a marsh in early spring.
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4610
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Her world suffused with green light and orchids, she seemed Maldivian Tara, perched on a cut granite bench. She had no need of orange blossoms there, required no hibiscus or ginger. What were plumerias to her?
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5166
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"If you will sing for them," he said, "I will give you both free dessert. And another bottle of wine." For a bottle of wine, she'd do the Baroque Happy Birthday.
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5620
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Her gown was a carnival of luminescence, sparkling even in fluorescent light. Leaning forward, she kept her legs crossed at the knee. She was wearing heeled sandals, leather straps criss-crossed to her ankle.
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6575
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she wanted to sit by the water's edge first, to look out over the harbor. She found a suitable bench. We were facing east, with the sun in our eyes. She'd left her beret at my house.
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4663
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We parked in the lot behind Marvelous Market. The other back door is Politics & Prose. They have an espresso machine in the basement. You can't take the coffee upstairs. We sat down at one of the tables. I looked at brochures about my old life.
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3600
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I pretended I could see the forms she invoked, but mostly I only watched hers. Even the movements of the air around her, the reflections on stacked silver tins as she passed. At corners in convex mirrors, angled for thieves. In the glass of a wall mounted
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4420
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In front of the jury, he tore off her robe. They quickly voted acquittal. Her form was an attribute of the divine, or a sign of the goddess's favor. All the beautiful are blameless.
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