Holly

There are a number of poems that share that leitmotif, that questioning of identity and reality. Those are the strongest.”

Never answer a suspect’s questions, Bill used to say. They answer yours.

Every solved problem adds to efficiency, as every scientist knows.

Olivia reads Barbara’s poems and has Marie make copies of every one, and when Barbara comes again—not every time, only sometimes—she will tell her to make a change or find another word. She always says the same two things, either “You were not present when you wrote this” or “You were the audience instead of the writer.” Once she tells Barbara that

Her mother’s ironclad dictum, badgered into Holly from the time she was a toddler: What you don’t want to do is what must be done first. Then it’s out of the way. This has stuck with Holly, as many childhood lessons do… for better or worse.

Did you know the human liver contains all nine essential amino acids?

They watch TV and have their dessert, spooning up a mixture of raspberry sorbet and Peter Steinman’s brains.

Spanish physician Arnold of Villanova knew that in the thirteenth century. Pope Innocent VIII ate the powdered brains of young boys and drank their blood. In medieval England, the flesh of hanged prisoners was considered a delicacy. But Em is fading. He knows

It makes her think of a documentary she saw about Bob Dylan. A folk singer from Greenwich Village in the sixties said, “He was just another guitar player trying to sound like Woody Guthrie. Then all at once he was Bob Dylan.”