I am sorry if this has reached you in error. It is just that I have so many millions of dollars to share, and isn’t that worth your response? I miss my father, my uncle, my grandfather. He was president, prime minister, or god.
You are the only one who can help at this time. I’m only asking to borrow space in your account. For that, you can take a quarter of the money. It will change your life, as you will change mine.
If I have disturbed you, I apologize. I mean no offense.
In the afternoon, he realized the extent of her betrayal. It erased the good morning: Marsalis on the stereo; the frittata cooked just long enough to brown, but not burn; the scent of her shampoo lingering long after she’d left the shower.
As she stood by the door, her overnight bag slung on her shoulder, a rolling suitcase by her side, he asked her how she’d managed to fool him for so long.
“I don’t know that’s the word I would choose,” she said. “All I did was behave in a certain way. You’re the one who never noticed.”
It was warm there, amidst the stones. The sun had soaked into us all, the water had lapped our feet, we had pressed palms and thrown heads back and laughed harder than ever before. It had been a slippery day, a day that managed to make it past us before we even knew it. It was night, all of a sudden. And then we were gone.
She had not expected time to move this way, first side to side, then backward. One moment they were dancing, the next, on a ferry. Then they sat somewhere out under the stars.
He took her hand and told her everything would be fine, that there was nothing to worry about, that he loved her madly.
It was the last word, madly, that made her the most nervous. It might have explained why she was so dizzy, why her stomach felt so upset, why she couldn’t quite convince herself of happiness.
That one? He draws pictures, using whatever they’ll give him to draw. Jesus overlooking the yard. A mother and child coming to visit. Five guys in the weight room.
They caught him once, putting signs in his drawings. Signs that no one else would recognize, unless they knew the neighborhood. Problem is, one of the counselors did know the neighborhood.
He can still draw, but now he has to show them before he shows any of us.
In the morning, she made tea, stirring in sugar quickly, the spoon scraping the bottom of the mug and making a soft tinkling sound, like far away wind chimes. The whole house was hushed, no water dripping from taps, no laundry tumbling down in the basement, no one else breathing or sighing or moving. The sipping noise she made as she drank reverberated. As the silent morning worse on, it became even more unbearable. Although she’d wanted them to go, she missed the noisemakers.
She walked on pebbles, the flesh of her feet no real barrier between rock and bone. Excruciating at first, it became less so after a time, her feet adjusting to the uneven surface, her nerves so overloaded that eventually they just backed away from the surface, retreating to calmer places in her body.
100 Proof 