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Michael and Abby drove in separate cars to Chili’s, where they faced each other across a slab of varnished table and ordered frozen margaritas. The food arrived sizzling on black cast-iron trays, and Michael set upon his ravenously. He’d grown fond of Chili’s; the enormity of the portions, the sens…

There was a pause. “We won the state championship. My junior year.” And now he smiled, unexpectedly.

“Wow,” Charlotte breathed, imagining it—those long halls at East, everyone cheering him. “That must’ve been like being God.”

“I guess it was,” Moose said, and he smiled again. “God of a fishpo…

It was the longest abstention of his adult life, excepting the five years when he hadn’t drunk at all, five years that had included (it was true) the period when he’d courted and married Mimi. But the present abstention had come a year too late. A year ago, without warning—or rather, after a warnin…

She set down her pen and looked at me. “Charlotte, we know this thing is rotten,” she said. “But it’s still in our hands, we can still walk away. All we will have lost is some time!” I saw the martini in her eyes—the heat, the conviction. And a strange feeling overtook me then; it flared at the wor…

Harris put his arm around his wife and pulled her close. There was so much he wanted to say. Courage! Look around you! The makings of happiness are before us! When Demographics in America first began to thrive, when he launched his focus groups of disenfranchised machine tool workers and reconstruc…