Sublime

‘That means mischief, eh?’ said Mr Hawley. ‘He’s got the freak of being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise.

Mrs. Amber Moltke, the artist’s young spouse, wore a great billowing pastel housedress and flattened espadrilles and was, for better or worse, the sexiest morbidly obese woman Atwater had ever seen. Eastern Indiana was not short on big pretty girls, but this was less a person than a vista, a quarter ton of sheer Midwest pulchritude, and Atwater had

a young creature who had known nothing but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more exactly to her taste.

she came in and said, smiling, ‘You made it, my hero, and Lady Zubeida is on her way to meet you. I pray to God that she will like you so that you will win my hand and be the happiest of men.’

I would have liked to promise Riccardo that I’d buy him a tuxedo on the installment plan, as we’d bought Mirella’s dress, but a man’s suit is more expensive, and then a man doesn’t have to find a husband. So I had to acknowledge that I couldn’t burden our budget with this superfluous expense. I remembered when Mirella and Riccardo were small childr

A ten-year-old getting high on pills. Foolish children. This is what we’re meant to say: Look at their choices, leading to a life of ruin. But lives are getting lived right now, this hour, down in the dirty cracks between the toothbrushed nighty-nights and the full grocery carts, where those words don’t pertain. Children, choices. Ruin, that was th

When the weapon of dischord was destroyed – and most say that happened in the scar, out past Batter Sea – what they found in the remnants was palladium, the Pale Lady. The Lady was driven by the blast far and wide, and then she settled down, easy as you like, into the river. It’s there that we prospect her. Because palladium goes to make the Carill