Two days before his show opened, Jack arrived at his hotel in New York to find a telegram from his grandmother. He was not alarmed. His grandmother believed telegrams were the most civilized form of communication. This telegram, like all of hers, was succinct. 

His belt buckle clanks against the floor of the bedroom, sounds so far away that he waits for an echo. He steps out of his jeans, nudges them aside with a bare foot. He pulls off his 

I tell this story not for my own honor, for there is little of that here, and not as a warning, for a man of my calling learns quickly that all warnings are in vain.

To reach Abulabaz, Isaac the Jew climbs a pyramid of slaves: one, two, three, up their black backs to his saddle (Persian carpets secured by a leather harness). 

The night, as most nights, was like a dream.

At ten, once I’d fed the dog the last scraps off the stove. Once I’d cursed the cat for scratching up my mama’s antique furniture, then welcomed him back into my arms. Once I’d slicked my hair into a ponytail, wrapping it up tight in my mama’s old, old scarf. Once I’d stayed in the bathtub a lil’ too long, letting the heat of the water do things my husband stopped doing years ago. Once I’d oiled myself down and up and down again with cocoa butter and reached for my housecoat hanging against the door—leopard print and silk—wrapping it around my bloated body, not caring if the water and oil bled through.

Then, soundlessly, I floated out to the garage and had a cigarette alone.

Mostly I listened to the blues. Lightnin’ Hopkins. Bessie Smith. Bobby Womack, if my mama was heavy on my mind, which was most nights. I nursed a lil’ Crown Royal poured thin over crushed ice. I smoked my Virginia Slims, pulling that cool menthol taste to the back of my throat before pushing it out—a thick plume.

He doesn’t know how to swim; he’s more like an elf than a water sprite. And still, he loves the water. Ever since Lord Byron and he rented the boat, they’ve gone out on the lake almost every afternoon, braving the storms. In the past few weeks the rain generally begins fairly late. 

I ran into my old friend Curtis yesterday, way uptown — the edges of Harlem. We’d been in a drug detox program together many years ago, long before they became fashionable and assumed the look of Ivy League campuses.

Funny thing to worry about. Little hairs. Hairs on back of sweater as she goes out of the room. Little hairs, how you look from the back, girls worry about this. Or they used to. Now girls are free. Okay to be unpretty, ungirls.

People think kids have no fear of time, no sense of the past, because they’re kids. Wrong.

After a lot of talking—what his wife, Inez, called assessment—Lloyd moved out of the house and into his own place. He had two rooms and a bath on the top floor of a three-story house. Inside the rooms, the roof slanted down sharply.