Activity

Anna ate her spaghetti and meatballs with her eyes fixed on the water. She was waiting for the diver to surface, but he did not. He was breathing underwater. She tried to picture him at the bottom of the bay—would he walk or swim? What was down there? Jealousy and longing spasmed through her. “Woul…

Your supervisor doesn’t mind you going out?”

“He likes me,” Nell said, an explanation Anna guessed she must employ—perhaps correctly—to account for much of what happened to her.

“Ours likes us to stay in,” Anna said, aware that she was playacting a little, invoking a version of Mr. Voss that …

When the lunch whistle blew at eleven-thirty, she was itching to get outside. In order to justify leaving the building, she didn’t bring a lunch—a ploy she knew did not fool Mr. Voss. But he couldn’t very well deny a girl food, so he watched grimly as she made for the door while the marrieds unwrap…

“They have the chair,” Eddie said, “and she needs it.”

He hadn’t intended to ask his friend for the money, but now he felt a sudden rise of hope that Dunellen might offer it. He had it, God knew. Might easily have the sum on him now, in his mammoth roll—warmed, like the rosaries, by his fierce b…

“I have to write them up, before anything else. Which will take weeks. I wish I had a slave to do all my transcribing. Maybe not a slave. An indentured servant.”

“What’s this book going to be, then? A thriller?”

“More of a mystery. I wanted to see what men were like with no women around.”

…