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Frankie And Perry And Patti And Dean

One object in our den stands out the most in my memory, for it retains the luminous glow with which my young eyes used to surround the special things of this world: my red-and-gold Motorola record player. It sat on the card table like a plump little household god, its short, thick spindle jutting up from the center of the turntable, capable of stacking eight 45-rpm records.

Scar Stories

Sunbeams

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage, just like the rhythm of a courtship — only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpse. The death has occurred much earlier.

Erica Jong

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

On Sunday, Josselyn has promised herself, she will unpack. But on Sunday she’s hung over and depressed, and it’s at least a hundred degrees in the apartment.

Sunbeams

Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest, which co-mingle their roots in the darkness underground.

William James

A Night On The Beach

To celebrate the arrival of the new year, Grace and I went to the south coast with our friend Pete. We stayed only a short walk from the beach, in a house that belonged to Andrew, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who had flown home for the holidays.

The Mayfly Glimmer Before Last Call

Jackie was nineteen, a cocktail waitress in Niagara Falls, New York. She worked in a bar on the other side of town and would come into our place with the other waitresses after her shift was up. Jackie was something else, the way she shook her hair.

Floating On The Darkness

He had tried to take my mother away from me, to leave me all alone. How different everything would have been without her. Suddenly it seemed as if she had always been with me, even when I was by myself, like that long cord that keeps astronauts from floating off into oblivion when they leave the spaceship.

The Lap Of Luxury

Russell was telling the three of us — Melody, Leigh, and me — about the last moments of his mother’s life. The three of us were crying, but Russell wasn’t. His face was pale, not his usual ruddy hue that made him look as if he’d just come in from jogging a few miles.

Sunbeams

There is something that happens between men and women in the dark that seems to make everything else unimportant.

Tennessee Williams