When Some Drunken Fool Asked If She

The Rest Of Sitka's Homicides Are So-called Crimes Of Passion, Which Is A Shorthand Way Of Expressing The Mathematical Product Of Alcohol And Firearms.

. . .i Really Ought To Have Recognized It For What It Was And, Perhaps, To Have Stopped Right There - For It Was Nostalgia, And What Inspires Nostalgia Has Been Dead A Long Time

There Are No Moments More Painful For A Parent Than Those In Which You Contemplate Your Child's Perfect Innocence Of Some Imminent Pain, Misfortune, Or Sorrow. That Innocence (like Every Kind Of Innocence Children Have) Is Rooted In Their Trust Of You, One That You Will Shortly Be Obliged To Betray; Whether It Is Fair Or Not, Whether You Can Help It Or Not, You Are Always The Ultimate Guarantor Or Destroyer Of That Innocence.

And Then The Man Reminded Max, With A Serious But Suave And Practiced Air, That Freedom Was A Debt That Could Be Repaid Only By Purchasing The Freedom Of Others.

The Two Dozen Commonplace Childhood Photographs - Snowsuit, Pony, Tennis Racket, Looming Fender Of A Dodge - Were An Inexhaustible Source Of Wonder For Him, At Her Having Existed Before He Met Her, And Of Sadness For His Possessing Nothing Of The Ten Million Minutes Of That Black-and-white Scallop-edged Existence Save These Few Proofs.