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inspo/revelation

Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, Rachel Kushner, The Paris Review, Don DeLillo, Alexander Chee

something crucial is revealed to the audience

SHE COMES IN rosy from the cold. Her scarf trails as she pushes the door shut behind her. The Requiem score drops from her hands. She bends to pick it up, and when she straightens, their eyes catch, spilling everything. Scared, defiant, pleading, thuggish. Wanting to be home again, with an old friend.

“Hey! You haven’t budged from that chair.”

“Good rehearsal?”

“The best!”

“I’m glad. What sections did you sing?”

She crosses to where he sits. Something of their old rhythm. She hugs him, Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck. Before he can stand, she slips past, into the kitchen, smelling on herself that blend of salt and bleach. “I’ll just take a quick shower before bed.”

She’s a smart woman, but she has never had much patience with the obvious. Nor does she think him capable of simple observation. She showered twenty minutes before heading out to sing her Brahms.

—p.251 TRUNK (153) by Richard Powers 4 years ago

“The treatment of the arhats is very skilled. Simply on its historical rarity and the quality of the drawing, we put the value between . . .” He mentions two figures that elicit a high-pitched primate giggle before she can throttle it. “Four Arts would be willing to pay you something in the middle of that range.”

She sits back, faking calm. She had hoped for a little freedom from the press of money. Two years, maybe three. But this is a fortune. Freedom. Enough to pay for a whole new life. Mr. Siang appraises her scarred face. His eyes remain impassive behind the blood-red frames. She stares back, ready for a showdown. She has watched the fiercest fire go dead. After Olivia, she can outlast any living gaze.

The scroll lies between them on the table. The wild, drunken calligraphy, the cryptic poem, the seated figures alone in their old forests, almost transformed, almost a part of everything—all hers to dispose of. But disposing of them suddenly feels criminal. Three trees want something from her. But she has less than no idea what.

Outlasting Mr. Siang is as easy as breathing. Three seconds, and he looks away. As he turns, she sees into his art appraiser’s soul. He has stumbled on some reference to this very scroll somewhere in the record. The fact is as clear as the tic on his eyelid. The scroll is worth many times his offer. It’s a long-lost national treasure.

She breathes in, fails to suppress a smile. “I wonder if someone over at the Asian Art Museum might help with identification.”

The Four Arts revised offer is quick in coming. Neither Mimi nor her two sisters nor their children will need to worry about money for a long time to come. It’s a way out for her. Retraining. A new identity. Why stay here any longer?

—p.368 CROWN (353) by Richard Powers 4 years ago

Maybe he didn't want that life after all, starting over broke, hailing a cab in a busy intersection filled with jockeying junior executives, arms aloft, bodies smartly spinning to cover every compass point. What did he want that was not posthumous? He stared into space. He understood what was missing, the predatory impulse, the sense of large excitation that drove him through his days, the sheer and reeling need to be.

—p.209 by Don DeLillo 4 years ago

I went home and cried on K.’s shoulder. It was both of us who pooled resources together to do what we could for my dad. For months, K. had been dipping his hand into his pocket for the man who almost made us impossible, the man who would hate him on sight. It was somewhere in that breakdown that I changed my mind. The next day, I took K. to my father’s bedside. My person stood by me, watching us. Where is she? my father asked, ignoring the obvious. I stared back my response, no words involved, just eye to eye, man to man. I saw it click. He swallowed and then opened his mouth to talk. Nothing came out. I repeated myself with a closed mouth, hands in my pockets, staring him down. I felt K. turn to stone in fear. The money we’d both spent bullied my father in front of me, its knuckles ready for his teeth. Do you understand? the money asked him. He shrank and I almost pitied him. I reached for K.’s hand, and feeling how much it had been sweating, I lifted his hand to my mouth and pressed my lips to it before holding his palm to my chest. Are you sure you understand, Dad? I asked. By then, my voice was hot iron. No one, I decided there and then, is allowed to kill me twice. Using my child-voice he said, Yes sir, and using his dad-voice, I said, Good boy.

—p.109 Good Boy (99) by The Paris Review 2 years, 10 months ago