I don’t remember everything about meeting Maurice ... probably we simply faced one another in the middle of the white coral road, hesitating to speak, staring at each other. We were the only boys for miles around. I remember wondering how he could walk on the hot, sharp coral without shoes.

Bob Darling spent the day and the evening on the fastest train in Europe. The train lugged slowly through yellow towns, then it began to pull together its force and go. 

On Christmas day, Travis calls from the rig. Miranda hears the phone ring and runs in the house to answer it. glad for an excuse to leave the parry in the yard.

“I know this is a morbid subject,” he says, “but your number’s gonna be up someday just like everybody else’s. You could be walking down the street, minding your own business and-Wham! Heart attack or truck, you’ll never know what hit you. It wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.”

They meet, without touching, at the edge of two stories, his unfolding, hers under revision, or perhaps hers rising, his falling, brushing past one another with no more contact than that made by two empty coats in a restaurant cloakroom

The lion turned to glare back over its shoulder. At the same time there came the Slam! Slam! of guns and up ahead in the burning red sand-dune spurts of dust like sudden tufts of dead grass where the bullets hit. At the lion's side the wounded lioness dragged herself. 

It was before sunrise. Hendrik Gonzalez was scrubbing down the little white deck of the boat and she watched him at work. He kept his face averted, shy and young. In his movements was a curious absorption, a completeness as if each action had its precise rhythm, a harmonic of his fundamental living tone. 

He started out at a nice easy 120 strides per minute, his heart rapidly increasing its beat to accommodate the extra strain on his body, his pulse more or less normal, and his breathing deep, rhythmic, and unlabored. On his right was the canal, on his left the river, and everywhere else trees. Or at least it appeared that way. In reality, the trees were only on his left, between the path and the river.

A cat had been taught to play the piano and this animal, sitting on a stool, played and played the whole existent piano repertory, and in addition five compositions of its own dedicated to several dogs.

Otherwise, the cat was possessed of a perfect stupidity, and during concert intermissions he would compose new pieces with a drive that left everyone flabbergasted. 

Thomas has said nothing the entire session. He leans back in the metal folding chair that he prefers. A year ago, for Thomas’s first appointment, Dr. Lena Novak borrowed the chair from a colleague and family friend, Jim Merrill, whose office was down the hall.