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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…

I turned away because my throat was closing up. Suddenly I had an erection. I knew men got that way about men, but I didn’t know I did.

His chest was like Christ’s. That’s probably who he was.

I could have followed anybody off that train. It would have been the same.

[...] After the film I talked to a man about vasectomies. A man with a mustache. I didn’t like him.

“You have to be sure,” he said.

“I’m never getting anybody pregnant again. I know that much.”

“Would you like to make an appointment?”

“Would you like to give me the money?”

“It won’t …