Meredith's father presents us with the bed at the big family party, a week before our wedding. He makes a big deal of it, of course, the way he makes a big deal out of everything. "This came from my great-grandfather Daniel," he says, running his hand along the smooth...
Joshua's palms were sweating profusely by the time he'd reached the underground-parking garage to the county court house. Dear God, what was he to do. He was at the end of his rope. He needed help. He needed someone to tell him that he was normal. That being a...
Carleton folded his white Oxford shirt into the brown leather carry on bag, smoothed down his suit and left the apartment. Michael spread Philadelphia cream cheese on Ritz crackers. It had to be Philadelphia. It had to be Ritz. Richard called a taxi. Marthe lay naked...
Cesare Soutina approached sixty like a wary old dog unsure if the food bowl contained poison or merely something difficult to chew. The still dense patch of hair on his head was speckled — or streaked — with silver, like rust on grape leaves; his wide nostrils arched...
He told me to meet him in the park, wearing only a flimsy top and skirt, no underwear, no bra. I walked from my apartment to the park across the street from the beer store, passing the old drunks, who leered at my nipples stiffening in the cool breeze of an early...
"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality...
There was more than one person in the room with her. She understood that now, but she had no idea how many there were. She sat on the bed having followed his instructions exactly. His e-mail had detailed the clothes she should and should not wear. It had told her...
She found this one in the Mark Russell lounge of the Omni Shoreham. Kennedy had held his Inauguration Ball here. Clinton, too, that old horndog. It was a nice, old, dignified place, a tidy distance from the White House. Mark Russell, the placard said, was a musician...
Death. The noose tightening around my neck. The act of strangulation as I'm coming. A leather cord constricting my cock, the blood swelling and making it hard. If I'm lucky, it'll just fall the fuck off. And then these voices will be gone. One makes me money. Another,...
The first time we met, Jimmy called me a 'wee lassie.' I swear it's the only time in my life anybody ever called me 'wee', but that's what Jimmy kept calling me even after I stood up and towered over him by about seven inches. We were at the Velvet Dark, a local hot...