Because Valeria is always late, because I’d like to have dinner with her at seven, and because, if I ask her to meet me at the restaurant at seven, I…

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Spindling, white Fjóla Neergaard, in dun wool slacks, her marble face perched on a whorl of scarves, drove her father’s Mercedes through a trash-blown lane of reupholsterers and auto-body shops…

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It was February and the rungs were cold as rods of ice. Beneath the suit he’d never had the occasion to get married in, Ernie Boettner was wearing his favorite…

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I doubt that death will come. Death? Could it be that the days, so long, will end? That’s how I daydream, calm, quiet. Could it be that death is a…

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Interesting fact: Toucan cereal bedspread to my plunge and deliver. It’s okay if you can’t make sense of that. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t grasp it either. The…

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Past Howell, he kept the speedometer needle at seventy for almost six miles, until he was in sight of the mailbox. Then he eased his foot from the accelerator, braked,…

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First, she tries counting. The numbers move sluggishly through her head in single file, like people in a line at the post office or at the bank or at the…

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There was no slant to the sun — it was just there, overhead, burning, making him sweat, making his underwear bind and the shirt stick to his back as if it had been…

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Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell It’s not hot out, it’s not cold. A shy, sharp sun overcomes the clouds, and the sky looks, at times, truly clean, like…

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Let’s see, how do I start this? With my father or with Lotte? My father. It’s already more formed in my head, so it’ll be easier getting into. I told…

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On the morning of his visit to the Forbidden City, the last day of his China trip, James woke exhausted, as he had almost every day he had been there.…

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“The thing you have to understand is that I really don’t understand people.” Gil sat on a squashy old sofa, legs akimbo, forearms on thighs. He was wearing a dark-green…

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The lake is still and the stars are mammoth. She glides beneath the surface, a dark form he can follow but cannot see until she passes through starlight, this long-limbed…

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The ladies gathered for one of their potlucks. They brought beautiful dishes. Red cabbage marinated in vinegars and slow-cooked with nutmeg and caraway seed. Salade niçoise with basil and thyme…

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A dead man twists around one of my Doric columns. I chose these columns for their plainness, their strength. I liked imagining people looking up at my home, its smoky…

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Sweet September up in the Boone — twenty past last bell on the first day of school and a pumpkin-colored school bus tools down Boone Street laying middle schoolers along…

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Sirs — Having read with interest Dr. Pritchard’s recent report of the young woman with paroxysmal amnesia and transformation of personality, as well as Dr. Slayer’s study “On the So-called…

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Once, when they were still a family and the boys were mostly grown yet still living at home, they were sitting, the four of them, at their customary seats at…

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Mariama, you’ll never read this letter: if I sent it, our civil settlement would be invalidated and the district attorney would reopen the criminal case. I have no reason to…

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Last week I received, via Priority Mail, a card inviting me to a wedding that I’d very much like to attend. After eighteen years of partnership, the card said, Ms.…

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The pain began in my hips, as far as I remember, and then moved to my lower back, and from there to my shoulders and then to my neck — while…

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Tom arrived with his suitcase. Its John Kerry sticker did not even say for president, so it seemed as if John Kerry might be the owner or designer of the…

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Fleming awoke in the dark and his room felt loose, sloshing so badly he gripped the bed. From his window there was nothing but a hallway, and if he craned…

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Bread Loaf, Vermont August 18, 1951 Here was the first surprise: the great man was much heavier, his body much more solid, than I’d anticipated. You would not have called…

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There was a foul odor coming from the house—?the odor, as it turned out, of rotting flesh—?but nobody did anything about it, at least not at first. I was away…

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They were both named Davis, but they were not married to each other and they were not related by blood. They were neighbors, however. They were both indecisive people, or…

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Gwen was the one who had insisted that Ma and I move to America. Sooner or later, she’d said, it would happen again, it was only a matter of time.…

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A special family lived around the corner from us at our beach house. How were they special? There were three children when most other families had two children. As a…

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