Sublime

They were very entertaining—it was like watching magic tricks. Both she and Camilla talked about their husbands the way we talked about the sisters at school, revealing how cleverly they’d deceived them, even if they had innocent motives such as buying a dress or choosing where to spend a vacation. Giacinta claimed she’d managed to make her husband

My reputation is largely the creature of the kindly imaginings of my flock, whom I chose not to disillusion, in part because the truth had the kind of pathos in it that would bring on sympathy in its least bearable forms.

Jo looked at the bar, where she’d worked for a few summers pouring wine and shaking cocktails for the hordes from away, sunburned tourists who’d said her little seaside village was quaint and asked what folks did here in the winter. Well, this is what we do here, she thought. We gain weight and drink too much and get on each other’s nerves.

That tardy shudder which had not figured in his forethought made his breakfast bitter.

que a los treinta y siete tenía dos hijas y dos nietas,

A hotel might once have been a metaphor for the body, for purgatory, for any transitory site. Muffled hallways. The repeating pattern of low-pile carpet. Sconce lighting. Echoing emergency stairwells that smell vaguely familiar. The sound of doors closing. Plastic ice buckets. Theft-proof hangers without hooks. Drawers no one ever uses. Perfect. An

The story that isn’t Mark Nechtr’s by Mark Nechtr concerns a young competitive archer, named Dave, and his live-in lover, named L____. Dave, who is not nearly so healthy as Mark, believes that the only things that give his life meaning and direction are his competitive archery and his lover, L____, who is a great deal more attractive and sympatheti