220031
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I became a fool for Adrienne Parker the first moment I set eyes on her.
Whenever Parker walked into Oliveira's Cafe my breath would stop. I'd try turning away, then find my gaze locked on her face. Maybe it was her bare arms that I found so appealing
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3100
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The next day was my faculty trial, and things grew real intense around the campus. A large crowd of students began to gather around the base of the building that housed the administrative offices, where my hearing was being held. The meeting room was up o
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197300
|
All of a sudden I felt a hand on my neck. I jumped up from my chair and turned to face my brother Darrell, with his surprisingly white shock of hair, the result of all the drugs he'd been experimenting with, back in his mid-twenties. He was even taller
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2421127
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He's kneeling on the floor of his West Village apartment, by the door, asking me to leave. He first said he saw someone once a week. But what he means is that they sleep together every night, as they live together, and spend their Sundays together.
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500
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The only sport that received any kind of group enjoyment in my family was tennis. Wimbledon, to be more precise. My mom liked to watch Wimbledon, getting up early to watch live matches played in England. So I'd join her.
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142720
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the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright
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126633
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Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don't like mazes — too much like…
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126511
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My wife and I were sitting at the bar at Brennan’s down on 4th Street one night, drinking too much without eating. Geary had convinced us to come down there with him, for two reasons. One, to give us the lowdown on where to stay and what to do in New Yo
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213721
|
The following day, I was so nervous that I decided to have a drink to keep a lid on my nerves. It wasn't even noon yet. They say that's when you know it's getting bad, and that drinking has become a problem. But I hadn't gone out with anyone in over fi
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174211
|
The first morning we met—I remember the rain, soft the way I like it—was a series she later attributed as a fourteen-frame sunrise.
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139500
|
It was days before Parker and I could even get up the nerve to look in each others' direction at the cafe. We kept trying to avoid the other's glance. But after a time things began to soften between us. I could sense it the day the tension began to eas
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214120
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That was the night that everything began to happen. It must have been past 3:00 a.m. when Darrell came down from the attic right into our bedroom. I lay nearly paralyzed with guilt beside my wife, trying to get to sleep. Elizabeth had staggered to bed
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158921
|
The diner was half filled with the loose ends of humanity that stayed up until five in the morning. We picked a booth by the window. The light in the diner was a dingy yellow, and the seats were that lobster-red vinyl that could only have been installe
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135300
|
7
We sat in Darrell's truck in the deserted silent world of the down-trodden industrial area of West Berkeley, where no one in his right mind went at five in the morning. "Put the gun away, Darrell," I said. "I mean it."
"I can't help but keep
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121910
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Darrell and I pulled into my driveway after being out all night long. A slash of sunlight fell across the purple Mexican sage beside my front walk. Except for the birds in the trees, there seemed to be an odd serenity to the air — until I spotted one
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