One rarely recalled Margaret’s early, sylvan loveliness
huh. weird
And yet there was something to what Corinne had said; they had been one another’s environs as children. The distance between them had been Some Other, Better Otto as great, in any important way, as it was now, but there had been no other beings close by, no other beings through whom they could prob…
When Corinne had called a week or so earlier about Thanksgiving, Otto, addled by alarm, said, “We’re having people ourselves, I’m afraid.” Corinne’s silence was like a mirror, flashing his tiny, harmless lie back to him in huge magnification, all covered with sticky hairs and microbes.
“Well, I’…
[...] In another country, under another code, it would have been my duty to return to Rufus’s with a gun. But in the suburbs, at the end of my sixteenth summer, this was not an option. Instead, I resorted to a form of civilized murder. By the time I reached my house everyone in Rufus’s yard was dea…
There was nothing stopping me from going back to where Michelle and I were staying, but these days had reduced us to the Rebel Motel. The maids spat out their chew in the shower stalls. There was a smell of insecticide. I wasn’t going back there to sit in the room and wait.
Michelle and I had ou…
