Don't tell me your story, I don't want to know.  Sew up my mouth so I can keep all these secrets.

 

If we don't talk about these things, they will not exist.  None of our lies bigotries passions desires beliefs thoughts jokes mistakes inner irreplaceable lives will ever be shared.

 

Plug up my ears and gouge out my eyes.  I like it better here in the…

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Briar Creek is one of those bland-ass megamalls with a Target and a Sam's and a Dick's and a bunch of shitty little chain restaurants where the cubicle crowd likes to drink, a surreal and nightmarish place--especially when you've got a good case of the shakes goin'.  

 

Toby pulls up about ten minutes late and we make the exchange in my car, both of us checking the mirrors for cops and watching as this lady a few rows over tries to get her toddler strapped into his stroller.…

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She chose me.  I didn't want to fail her, no matter what that closeted copper clown said about protocol.  He fretted so because his circuits were built to approximate love, not to deal with it.  Her wussy brother (and of course I knew he was her brother, I'm programmed to recognize recessed traits in facial patterns, but did I ever say boo about that creepy thing they had going for a while?) appropriated me for his hackneyed quests where I was dinged, donged, strafed by laser cannon, dumped in… Continue

I finally "got" Guitar Trio.  

 

My sister-in-law's wife re: Cold Cave: "These guys totally wish they were German." 

 

I ate a loaded brownie and nearly had a panicked meltdown in the middle of the city plaza, but my wife chilled me out and we watched a child playing…

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For the first couple of years they attended the public ceremonies, because she was still seeking comfort in the company of others like herself, and because she thought it was a good idea for Molly and Brian to see how people wanted to honor their father.  But then it became ritualistic to the point of fetishistic, like everyone in the nation thought it belonged to them--and in a way maybe it did but in the realest way possible it belonged to her and her children.

 

So now on…

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How dare they.  Now everyone will blame me; they'll say I wasn't prepared to lead; they'll say I was too cowardly to face the threat head-on; they'll say it was my fault.  And yes well they briefed  me repeatedly on the possibilities, they handed reports across my desk--but who would believe such a thing, I ask you?--and I relied on their good advices, I relied on my crack team, but now it's up to me and I must become the avenging hand, swift and sure.…

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Some of us called on those phones in the backs of the seats and some of us used our cell phones, so we know about New York and DC.  These sick bastards have left us no choice whatsoever.  The two guarding the cockpit look scared as we charge up the aisle behind the drinks cart, and seeing that emotion in their eyes is restorative, empowering, exhilarating--see how you like it, you murdering cocksuckers.   The rest of them are at my back, strong, making me strong.  One of the…

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Guy standing next to me on the sidewalk watching says: "I was supposed to be in there.  I work in the South Tower, 59th Floor, Snyder Investment Services."  I tell him he's the luckiest guy on planet Earth but he seems uncertain.  "Snyder knows I'm a huge Giants fan, see, and they played their season opener on Monday Night Football last night and he told me it'd be cool if I came in a little late." Then it looks like there's sparks coming off the tower, all the windows exploding at once and…

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Millions of scraps of paper swaying back and forth against the blue, nearly suspended in their unhurried waltz, all that information--namesnumberscreditsdebitstimesdates--wafting down.

 

"They jumping!  Oh God, they jumping!"

 

In the courtyard between the towers, in the time between impact and collapse, speakers playing a Muzak version of Billy Joel's "Always a Woman."

 

All those high-heeled shoes abandoned in the streets, covered in white…

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The city beneath me; cool blue above.  On any other morning this would be the greatest view in the whole wide world.  Black smoke gushes from the shattered window where I climbed out, and I press my face against the wall thinking it will be cold but it burns instead, and I realize that I'm not thinking very clearly.  Growing up, the priests always told us hell was hot and I thought it was an abstract thing to make you feel guilty for lyin cheatin stealin jerkin off pretty much everything but…

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The average firefighter carries a hundred pounds of gear.  The people who work in the building are coming down the steps as we're heading up, their faces in varying stages of composure: some calm and others frantic, most of them aware that this time it's serious.  A few of them have walked all this way from the upper floors, where what it's like I can't even imagine--and I seen some things in this job, buddy, things I can't unsee.  When these guys get to the lobby they'll have to make a run…

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I snatch the phone up on the first ring and this time it's her, she's calling from one of those phones in the seat-back, and she tells me what's happening on the plane in a voice I've never heard her use before.  For a moment I resist telling her about New York but she deserves to know so I describe the scene on television and she says, "Put Abby on."  I hold our little girl up to the phone and she says what she needs to say and then when I get back on I tell her things it would usually…

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Fred is hitting on me again in that lazy benign way of his, fully aware that I've got a boyfriend.  And after all, he's got a wife and kids and that weekend place out in Connecticut, but it makes the time go by, gives your mind someplace to dawdle when the numbers and the guidelines start to blur.  Then a sound tears through everything and the whole room goes sideways and my computer is smashed on the floor beside me and part of Fred is still there but part of him isn't.  Glass and…

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All he ever wanted was to be the hand of his god, a punishing sword to deliver his people from the clutches of the transgressor who would make a whore of his sister and a slave of his brother.  Such eloquences from The Narrow One convinced him to sacrifice his body in order to become the manifestation of his god's will.

 

Now he is soaked in blood from his elbow all the way down to the end of the blade.  The fuselage rocks back and forth as Flight 11 takes its aim, one of the…

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Some commotion up in the first class seats, I don't know.  To be honest, I'm just now starting to wake up; if Sheila hadn't gotten up with me in the pre-dawn twilight, fixing my coffee the way I like it (two creams and a dash of sugar), I might not have made the shuttle.  An electric feeling goes right up through the center of me when I see the shock of blood, so out of place here in this humming body of steel and wing and engine.  His entire arm is scarlet, he is shouting at us to stay in…

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