EVENING

A new lens passed over everything she saw, the shadows moved on the wall like skeletons handing things to each other. Her body was flung back over a thousand beds in a thousand other rooms. She was undergoing a revolution, she felt split open. In her mattress there beat the feather of a wild bird.

Where were you all this time? she said. Where have you been?

I guess far away.

Yes you were. Too far away.

They sat in silence.

You know you frightened me a little, she said. At the beginning.

No.

You did.

He smiled at that.
Evening
Susan Minot

The book is SO much better than the movie, although the movie was good...

THE LOST VAN GOGH

Neither of the two men trusted the other, but that, after all, was the nature of the business.

Anxious to get started, uncomfortably close, they faced one another in the semidarkness, each with a shoulder pressed against the exit door to the roof. The tight, airless space at the top of the fire stairs barely concealed them, and they strained to keep apart, to maintain the few inches separating them during the long wait.
A.J.  Zerries

DELUSIONS OF GRANDMA

The Chinese have a curse, "May you live in interesting times." As curses went, Cora felt that this was truly the best she'd every heard. Not that she was particularly fond of curses, but in her opinion this one was eminently applicable, far superior to the generic "Go to hell" or the cheery "Break a leg" or even the medieval "A pox on your house." For many years she had thought that this first, favorite curse had actually gone, "May you have an interesting life," and she had like that version also, but then, an interesting life didn't encompass as large a radius as these interesting times...
Carrie Fisher

ALMOST

I have this boyfriend who comes to visit me--it's mostly a sex thing. Unless I visit him, in which case it's mostly a babysitting thing. I'm not sure which turns me on more. You don't think of British Jews, if you happen to know any--and I didn't until Daniel Jacobs--as world-class lovers, but he must be an exception, or it could be the antidepressants he takes, which not only keep the blues at bay...
Elizabeth Benedict