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She sat up and rubbed her eyes. She looked slaphappy, the way she looked sometimes after a second gin and tonic. Eight months before, after a year’s meticulous planning, she had bought her own ticket to New York from Cincinnati. And this was just the beginning; Stacey hoped to ride the wave of her …

Rory knew before he came to New York what sort of life he would have. He’d read about it in novels by hip young authors who lived there. He saw the apartment, small but high-ceilinged, a tall, sooty window with a fire escape twisting past a chemical-pink sky. Nights in frantic clubs, mornings hunch…

“I think we can clean it,” said Julius, glancing at me. He was a big man with olive skin and hair that shone like plastic. Each mark of the comb was visible on his head. I knew why my mother loved him, then—he was the sort of man who stayed warm when it was cold out, who kept important tickets and …

The land got very strange. Gray hills bulged from the earth in such a way that their middles looked wider than their bases. “It’s like Dr. Seuss,” I overheard Kylie say. Caroline sketched in her notebook. I stared out the window at the weird hills and told myself that we lived in San Francisco, in …

“Why don’t we wait in the first class lounge so the girls can sit down?” my wife suggested.

“We’re riding hard-seat,” I said. “It’s only eight hours.”

The girls looked aghast. I watched them cast baleful looks their mother’s way, and saw, in their silky, seamless faces, the thick patina so ma…