Excitement

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 122 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  And what good timing! True, her stroke was crude, clearly that of a beginner. And she wasn’t going to win any races. But the first time she marched out to the end of the dock, jumped into the water, and swam out to Lamb’s boat, the expression on Caitlin’s face made it all worthwhile. “I thought you didn’t know how to swim.” “You shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Vix told her. “I was hardly jumping. This is your third summer here and until now I’ve never seen you in water above your knees.” “I wasn’t hot enough to swim until now.” Caitlin laughed. “I just love the way your mind works.” They prepared for the arrival of the Chicago Boys by installing a hook- and-eye lock on their bedroom door. But nothing could have prepared Vix for the day Gus took her by surprise in the pond, grabbing hold of her foot while she was swimming out to Lamb’s boat. She panicked, going under, coming up gagging and choking, flailing her arms. The second her feet touched bottom she ran for shore. Gus was right behind her. “Hey, Cough Drop,” he called, tossing her a towel. “You’ve got snot coming out of your nose.” Daniel stood by slapping his thigh as if she were performing a comedy routine for his pleasure. To get back at them she and Caitlin raided their room. Caitlin found a jock strap dangling from a hook on the back of their door. She sniffed it and proclaimed the owner this summer’s winner of the Dingleberry Award. They found a Victoria’s Secret catalog under a pile of dirty clothes, which only enraged Vix more. Imagine a sexy underwear catalog with her name on it! And one or both of the Chicago Boys had annotated the pages: best tits, best ass, best all-round-lay. “These guys don’t think about anything else!” Vix said. Not that she and Caitlin weren’t thinking about it, too. Their Power had turned into an itch that never went away. But at least it was hidden, not dangling between their legs for all the world to see. Caitlin taped a photo of Georgia O’Keeffe to the Chicago Boys’ bunk bed. Dear Baumer and Pustule,

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “She’s probably got a hot date lined up and doesn’t want us to know,” Maia joked. “Something like that,” she told them. For added luck, she wrapped her piano shawl over her raincoat. She felt exotic when she wore it, like a flamenco dancer. And if she didn’t exactly find luck in Atlantic City, she found Luke. She wouldn’t tell Maia and Paisley they met at the craps table. No one ever had to know the truth unless she and Luke wound up together. Then Maia would say, Can you believe Vix met Luke at a casino in Atlantic City? At the craps table? No, they wouldn’t believe it. She kept her impulsive side to herself. She’d once overheard Maia telling a friend at school, Victoria is the least spontaneous person in our entire class, but I’d trust her with my life. Actually, she didn’t really meet Luke at the craps table. She watched him. He was hot, on a roll, with a stack of chips in front of him that doubled and tripled every time he threw the dice. He was boyish, flush with excitement. She didn’t know it was a twenty-dollar table until she tried to place a bet. Embarrassed, she quickly retrieved her dollar chips. She hung around to watch anyway, as the crowd cheered Luke on, betting with him. He looked up once, caught her eye, and smiled. At the end of the day, as she was playing a slot machine, he came up behind her, dropped a quarter into the slot, covered her hand with his, and pulled the handle. Three cherries, clanging bells, and twenty ... thirty ... fifty dollars’ worth of quarters came spilling out. He caught them in a cup as she stood with her hands over her mouth, fighting the urge to jump up and down and shriek. “Some days you just can’t lose,” he said. He was slight, just her height, charming, with bedroom eyes. “Have dinner with me,” he said. When she didn’t answer right away he pulled out his wallet, fished out his driver’s license with its photo ID, held it up for her to see. “Luke Garden,” he told her. “New York City. Thirty-one, single, respectable, straight, Cornell ’80, sports management. I just won big!” So she had dinner. She told him her name was D’Nisha Cross. She told him she worked at ABC, in development. Two things borrowed, nothing blue. “Stay,” he said after dinner. “I’ve got a suite. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. You get to sleep wherever you want. Really. Here ...” He

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  Millard obeyed. His penis did not have much strength, for it was too soon after the first orgasm, but he slipped it in, pushing it with his hand. Then I reached out with my two hands and caressed the balls and put two fingers at the basis of the penis and rubbed as he moved. Millard was instantly aroused, his penis hardened, and he began to move in and out again. Then he stopped himself. “I must not be so demanding,” he said in a strange tone. “You will be tired out for John.” We lay back and rested, smoking. I was wondering if Millard had felt more than sensual desire, whether my love for John weighed on him. But although there was always a hurt sound to his words, he continued to ask me questions. “Did John have you today? Did he take you more than once? How did he take you?” In the weeks to come, Millard taught me many things I had not done with John, and as soon as I learned them I tried them with John. Finally he became suspicious of where I was learning new positions. He knew I had not made love before I met him. The first time I tightened my muscles to clutch at his penis, he was amazed. The two secret relationships became difficult for me, but I enjoyed the danger and the intensity. [image file=image_rsrc1RD.jpg] LilithLilith was sexually cold, and her husband half knew it, in spite of her pretenses. This led to the following incident. She never took sugar because she did not want to grow plumper than she was, and she used a sugar substitute, tiny white pills which she carried in her handbag all the time. One day she ran out of them and asked her husband to buy some on his way home. So he brought her a little vial like the one she had ordered, and she put two of the pills into her coffee after dinner. They were sitting there together and he was looking at her with an expression of mellow tolerance, which he often had in the face of her nervous explosions, her crises of egotism, of self-blame, of panic. To all her dramatic behavior he responded with an unwavering good humor and patience. She was always storming alone, being angry alone, going through vast emotional upheavals in which he did not take part. Possibly this was a symbol of the tension which did not take place between them sexually. He refused all her primitive, violent challenges and hostilities, he refused to enter this emotional arena with her and respond to her need of jealousies, of fears, of battles.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Para cuando tenía catorce años, dejó de querer visitarme cada dos fines de semana, y ahora, apenas nos conocemos. Ni siquiera llamaba a menos que necesitara dinero. Sacudo la cabeza, despejándola. —¿Quieres poner una cinta? —sugiero a Jordan. No la miro a los ojos, pero puedo ver su cabeza moverse en mi dirección. —¿Una cinta? ¿Como una cinta de casete? De repente, su mirada se dirige al estéreo de mi auto y sus ojos se abren, la sorpresa ilumina su rostro. Casi me río. ¿No lo notó de camino hacia aquí? —¿Eso es una casetera de verdad? —dice. Alarga la mano y toca la radio del auto viejo como si fuera un jarrón precioso y presiona Abrir. Aparece una cinta de casete transparente con letras blancas que nunca escuché. La quita, la ahueca en su mano y lee el título. —Guns N 'Roses. —Se lleva la mano a la boca, como si estuviera a punto de llorar—. Oh, Dios mío. Lanzándose hacia la guantera, la abre y mira fijamente la fila de cintas ordenadamente dispuestas. —Deep Purple —lee—, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, ZZ Top... Luego, parece detectar algo que realmente la emociona, porque se acerca y saca el estuche negro de Def Leppard. —¿Hysteria? —exclama, leyendo el título del álbum—. Ya no hacen ese álbum. ¡Todo lo que puedes conseguir es la versión en vivo! Alzo las cejas, no estoy seguro de por qué todo esto es tan emocionante. —Te tomaré la palabra —digo, un poco divertido por su emoción—. Esta camioneta era de mi padre. Esas son sus cintas. Simplemente nunca llegué a sacarlas después que... falleció hace unos años. Se me ocurre que es la primera en tocar la cinta de Guns N'Roses desde que él la puso en el reproductor. Mira de nuevo a la colección.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  She had gone to Welch High School, and it seemed not to have occurred to her to live anywhere else. To leave West Virginia, even to leave Welch, would have been unthinkably disloyal, like deserting your family. “Just because I live here now,” I said, “doesn’t mean I couldn’t move.” “That would be a terrible mistake. You live here. Think of what you’d miss. Your family and friends. And senior year is the highlight of your entire high school experience. You’d miss Senior Day. You’d miss the senior prom.” • • • I walked home slowly that evening, thinking over what Miss Katona had said. It was true that many grown-ups in Welch talked about how senior year in high school was the highlight of their lives. On Senior Day, something the school had set up to keep juniors from dropping out, the seniors wore funny clothes and got to skip classes. It was not exactly a compelling reason to stay on in Welch for one more year. As for the senior prom, I had about as much chance of getting a date as Dad did of ending corruption in the unions. I’d been speaking hypothetically about moving to New York a year early. But as I walked, I realized that if I wanted to, I could up and go. I could really do it. Maybe not right now, not this minute—it was the middle of the school year—but I could wait until I finished eleventh grade. By then I’d be seventeen. I had almost a hundred dollars saved, enough to get me started in New York. I could leave Welch in under five months. I got so excited that I started running. I ran, faster and faster, along the Old Road overhung with bare-branched trees, then on to Grand View and up Little Hobart Street, past the barking yard-dogs and the frost-covered coal piles, past the Noes’ house and the Parishes’ house, the Halls’ house and the Renkos’ house until, gasping for air, I came to a stop in front of our house. For the first time in years, I noticed my half-finished yellow paint job. I’d spent so much time in Welch trying to make things a little bit better, but nothing had worked. In fact, the house was getting worse. One of the supporting pillars was starting to buckle. The leak in the roof over Brian’s bed had gotten so bad that when it rained, he slept under an inflatable raft Mom had won in a sweepstakes by sending in Benson & Hedges 100s packages we’d dug out of trash cans. If I left, Brian could have my old bed. My mind was made up. I was going to New York City as soon as the school year was out. I clambered up the mountainside to the rear of the house—the stairs had completely rotted through—and climbed through the back window we now used as a door.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  At that point Lori, Brian, and I would create a ruckus to distract the clerk while Mom hid a dress under a raincoat she would be carrying on her arm. We got three or four nice dresses for Maureen that way, but on one excursion, when Brian and I were pretending to punch each other out and Mom was in the process of slipping a dress under her raincoat, the saleslady turned to Mom and asked if she intended to buy that dress she was holding. Mom had no choice but to pay for it. “Fourteen dollars for a child’s dress!” she said as we left the store. “It’s highway robbery!” Dad devised an ingenious way to come up with extra cash. He figured out that when you made a withdrawal from the drive-through window at the bank, it took a few minutes for the transaction to register in the computer. So he would open a bank account, and a week or so later, he would withdraw all the money from a teller inside the bank while Mom withdrew the same amount from the drive-through window. Lori said it sounded outright felonious, but Dad said all he was doing was outsmarting the fat-cat bank owners who shylocked the common man by charging usurious interest rates. “Wear innocent expressions,” Mom told us kids the first time we dropped Dad off in front of the bank. “Will we have to go to a juvenile-delinquent center if we get busted?” I asked. Mom assured me it was all perfectly legal. “People overdraw their accounts all the time,” she said. “If we get caught, we’ll just pay a little overdraft fee.” She explained that it was sort of like taking out a loan without all the messy paperwork. But as we drove up to the teller’s window, Mom seemed to get edgy and giggled nervously as she passed the withdrawal slip through the bulletproof window. I think she was enjoying the thrill of taking from the rich. After the woman inside passed us the cash, Mom drove around to the front of the bank. In a minute, Dad strolled out. He climbed into the front of the car, turned around, and, with a wicked grin, held up a stack of bills and riffled them with his thumb. • • • The reason Dad was having a tough time getting steady work—as he kept trying to tell us—was that the electricians’ union in Phoenix was corrupt. It was run by the mob, he said, which controlled all the construction projects in the city, so before he could get a decent job, he had to run organized crime out of town. That required a lot of undercover research, and the best place to gather information was at the bars the mobsters owned. So Dad started spending most of his time in those joints. Mom rolled her eyes whenever Dad mentioned his research. I began to have my own doubts about what he was up to.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  The breath of death had whipped their senses. Pierre hailed a taxi. In the taxi he could not wait. He made Elena sit over him, with her back to him, the whole length of her body against his, concealing him completely. He raised her skirt. Elena said, “Not here, Pierre. Wait until we get home. People will see us. Please wait. Oh, Pierre, you’re hurting me! Look, the policeman stared at us. And now we’re stopped here, and people can see us from the sidewalk. Pierre, Pierre, stop it.” But all the time that she feebly defended herself, and tried to slip off, she was conquered by pleasure. Her efforts to sit still made her even more keenly aware of Pierre’s every movement. Now she feared that he might hurry his act, driven by the speed of the taxi and the fear that it would soon stop in front of the house and the taxi driver would turn his head towards them. And she wanted to enjoy Pierre, to reassert their bond, the harmony of their bodies. They were observed from the street. Yet she could not draw away, and he now had his arms around her. Then a violent jump of the taxi over a hole in the road threw them apart. It was too late to resume the embrace. The taxi had stopped. Pierre had just enough time to button himself. Elena felt they must look drunk, disheveled. The languor of her body made it difficult for her to move. Pierre was filled with a perverse enjoyment of this interruption. He enjoyed feeling his bones half-melted in his body, the almost painful withdrawal of the blood. Elena shared his new whim, and later they lay on the bed caressing each other and talking. Then Elena told Pierre the story she had heard in the morning from a young French woman who sewed for her.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  There was no reason for me to be automatically in awe of the wit and intellect of these New Yorkers. I picked up the suitcase. Evan did not insist I give it back to him. In fact, he seemed sort of relieved that I was carrying it. We continued on down the block, and he kept glancing at me sideways. “You West Virginia girls are one tough breed,” he said. “You got that right,” I told him. • • • Evan dropped me off at a German restaurant called Zum Zum. Lori was behind the counter, carrying four beer steins in each hand, her hair in twin buns and speaking in a thick German accent because, she explained later, it increased tips. “Dees ees mein seester!” she called out to the men at one of her tables. They raised their beer steins and shouted, “Velkomen to New Yorken!” I didn’t know any German, so I said, “Grazi!” They all got a chuckle out of that. Lori was in the middle of her shift, so I went out to wander the streets. I got lost a couple of times and had to ask directions. People had been warning me for months about how rude New Yorkers were. It was true, I learned that night, that if you tried to stop them on the street, a lot of them kept on walking, shaking their heads; those who did stop didn’t look at you at first. They gazed off down the block, their faces closed. But as soon as they realized you weren’t trying to hustle them or panhandle money, they warmed right up. They looked you in the eye and gave you detailed instructions about how, to get to the Empire State Building, you went up nine blocks and made a right and cut across two blocks and so on. They even drew you maps. New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly. • • • Later, Lori and I took a subway down to Greenwich Village and walked over to the Evangeline, a women’s hostel where she had been living. That first night I woke up at three a.m. and saw the sky all lit up a bright orange. I wondered if there was a big fire somewhere, but in the morning Lori told me that the orange glow came from the air pollution refracting the light off the streets and buildings. The night sky here, she said, always had that color. What it meant was that in New York, you could never see the stars. But Venus wasn’t a star. I wondered if I’d be able to see it. The very next day, I landed a job at a hamburger joint on Fourteenth Street. After taxes and social security, I’d be taking home over eighty dollars a week.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  There was no reason for me to be automatically in awe of the wit and intellect of these New Yorkers. I picked up the suitcase. Evan did not insist I give it back to him. In fact, he seemed sort of relieved that I was carrying it. We continued on down the block, and he kept glancing at me sideways. “You West Virginia girls are one tough breed,” he said. “You got that right,” I told him. • • • Evan dropped me off at a German restaurant called Zum Zum. Lori was behind the counter, carrying four beer steins in each hand, her hair in twin buns and speaking in a thick German accent because, she explained later, it increased tips. “Dees ees mein seester!” she called out to the men at one of her tables. They raised their beer steins and shouted, “Velkomen to New Yorken!” I didn’t know any German, so I said, “Grazi!” They all got a chuckle out of that. Lori was in the middle of her shift, so I went out to wander the streets. I got lost a couple of times and had to ask directions. People had been warning me for months about how rude New Yorkers were. It was true, I learned that night, that if you tried to stop them on the street, a lot of them kept on walking, shaking their heads; those who did stop didn’t look at you at first. They gazed off down the block, their faces closed. But as soon as they realized you weren’t trying to hustle them or panhandle money, they warmed right up. They looked you in the eye and gave you detailed instructions about how, to get to the Empire State Building, you went up nine blocks and made a right and cut across two blocks and so on. They even drew you maps. New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly. • • • Later, Lori and I took a subway down to Greenwich Village and walked over to the Evangeline, a women’s hostel where she had been living. That first night I woke up at three a.m. and saw the sky all lit up a bright orange. I wondered if there was a big fire somewhere, but in the morning Lori told me that the orange glow came from the air pollution refracting the light off the streets and buildings. The night sky here, she said, always had that color. What it meant was that in New York, you could never see the stars. But Venus wasn’t a star. I wondered if I’d be able to see it. The very next day, I landed a job at a hamburger joint on Fourteenth Street. After taxes and social security, I’d be taking home over eighty dollars a week.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  15 ALL HER LIFE she’d dreamed of being seventeen, like the Dancing Queen. And now she was, or would be very soon. On July Fourth she and Caitlin were singing along with Debbie Harry as they cruised up island in Caitlin’s rusted red pickup. By the time they hit Menemsha it was after five. They figured they’d do sunset there, then head for home. But as soon as they stepped onto the beach they spotted Bru and Von tossing around a Fris-bee. Caitlin pushed her canvas tote at Vix, kicked off her Tevas, and flashed her a wicked smile as she raced down the beach, leaping into the air to snatch their Frisbee in mid-flight. Vix hung back, watching, as if she were in sixth grade again, studying Caitlin for the secret to success. Caitlin was dazzling at seventeen. Her hair cascaded down her back, her skin was moist and flawless, and the expression on her face dared anyone to mess with her. She’d reached her full height that year, leaving Vix three inches behind. She was all legs, like Barbie, but without the ridiculous chest. Caitlin saw this as a defect, some trick nature had played on her. The girls at school encouraged her to send a photo to Elle or Cosmo or even Seventeen. The boys drooled over her. Even the teachers found her irresistible, but irritating. She was so bright. Why didn’t she apply herself? She could be anything, do anything, with just a little effort. But half the time she didn’t turn her papers in when they were due, and she refused to study for tests. “School has nothing to do with life,” she’d say. She’d gone skiing with Phoebe over spring break, to the Italian Alps, and returned with big news for Vix. “Congratulations are in order,” she’d announced. “I’m no longer a virgin.” So, Caitlin had been first, just as she’d guaranteed. Well, Vix wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t even disappointed. “Who?” she asked. “Where?”

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  When their names were called, to confirm their number, each one answered in turn. There was no attempt at treachery. After the muster was taken the gates were shut, and the cry rang out - ‘Knights, fulfil your duty!’ Then, as the trumpets blared, the heralds withdrew. The battle was set to begin on both sides. In go the spears, held firmly for attack; in go the spurs, piercing the flanks of the horses. These were plainly men who could joust and ride. The shivering shafts then fell against the sturdy shields. One rider feels the thrust against his breastbone. The spears spring up, some twenty feet in height; the gleaming swords are raised, as bright as silver. The helmets of the knights are smashed to smithereens. BLOOD BUBBLES. BONES BREAK. BREASTS BURST. One knight hurls himself through the thickest of the throng. One steed stumbles, and down come horse and rider, rolling under foot. Another knight stands his ground and fights with his spear, sending his opponent tumbling. Here is one wounded and taken; despite his protests he is led to the pillar of defeat, where he must remain for the duration of the tournament. Another fallen knight is escorted to the other side. From time to time Theseus ordains a pause, so that the knights may rest and with drink or other cordials refresh themselves. There were many occasions when the two Thebans, Palamon and Arcite, were engaged in single combat; they scarred and slashed one another, and were both unhorsed. There is no tiger in the woods of Greece, her whelp stolen by a hyena, who was more savage than Arcite stalking his foe. The Moroccan lion, hunted down and weak from hunger, was not more fierce than Palamon against his enemy in love. Enraged with jealousy they struck each other hard; their blood ran in streams upon the earth. Yet there is an end to everything. Before the day drew to a close the strong king, Emetreus, managed to get hold

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I needed to be at the station before seven. Mom announced that since she was not by nature an early riser, she would not be getting up to see me off. “I know what you look like, and I know what the bus station looks like,” she said. “And those big farewells are so sentimental.” • • • I could hardly sleep that night. Neither could Brian. From time to time, he’d break the silence by announcing that in seven hours I’d be leaving Welch, in six hours I’d be leaving Welch, and we’d both start cracking up. I fell asleep only to be woken at first light by Brian, who, like Mom, wasn’t an early riser. He was tugging at my arm. “No more joking about it,” he said. “In two hours, you’ll be gone.” Dad hadn’t come home that night, but when I climbed through the back window with my suitcase, I saw him sitting at the bottom of the stone steps, smoking a cigarette. He insisted on carrying the suitcase for me, and we set off down Little Hobart Street and around the Old Road. The empty streets were damp. Every now and then Dad would look over at me and wink, or make a tocking sound with his tongue as if I were a horse and he was urging me on. It seemed to make him feel like he was doing what a father should, plucking up his daughter’s courage, helping her face the terrors of the unknown. When we got to the station, Dad turned to me. “Honey, life in New York may not be as easy as you think it’s going to be.” “I can handle it,” I told him. Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out his favorite jackknife, the one with the horn handle and the blade of blue German steel that we’d used for Demon Hunting. “I’ll feel better knowing you have this.” He pressed the knife into my hand. The bus turned down the street and stopped with a hiss of compressed air in front of the Trailways station. The driver opened up the luggage compartment and slid my suitcase in next to the others. I hugged Dad. When our cheeks touched, and I breathed in his smell of tobacco, Vitalis, and whiskey, I realized he’d shaved for me. “If things don’t work out, you can always come home,” he said. “I’ll be here for you. You know that, don’t you?” “I know.” I knew that in his way, he would be. I also knew I’d never be coming back. Only a few passengers were on the bus, so I got a good seat next to a window. The driver closed the door, and we pulled out. At first I resolved not to turn around. I wanted to look ahead to where I was going, not back at what I was leaving, but then I turned anyway. Dad was lighting a cigarette. I waved, and he waved back.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I had spent a lot of time imagining what New York would be like, but the one thing that had never occurred to me was that the opportunities would come so easily. Aside from having to wear those embarrassing red-and-yellow uniforms with matching floppy hats, I loved the job. The lunch and dinner rushes were always exciting, with the lines backing up at the counter, the cashiers shouting orders over the microphones, the grill guys shoveling hamburgers through the flame-broiling conveyer belt, everyone running from the fixings counter to the drinks station to the infrared fries warmer, staying on top of the orders, the manager jumping in to help whenever a crisis cropped up. We got 20 percent off on our meals, and for the first few weeks there, I had a cheeseburger and a chocolate milk shake every day for lunch. • • • In the middle of the summer, Lori found us an apartment in a neighborhood we could afford—the South Bronx. The yellow art deco building must have been pretty fancy when it opened, but now graffiti covered the outside walls, and the cracked mirrors in the lobby were held together with duct tape. Still, it had what Mom called good bones. Our apartment was bigger than the entire house on Little Hobart Street, and way fancier. It had shiny oak parquet floors, a foyer with two steps leading down into the living room—where I slept—and, off to the side, a bedroom that became Lori’s. We also had a kitchen with a working refrigerator and a gas stove that had a pilot light, so you didn’t need matches to get it going, you just turned the dial, listened to the clicking, then watched the circle of blue flame flare up through the tiny holes in the burner. My favorite room was the bathroom. It had a black-and-white tile floor, a toilet that flushed with a powerful whoosh, a tub so deep you could submerge yourself completely in it, and hot water that never ran out. It didn’t bother me that the apartment was in a rough neighborhood; we’d always lived in rough neighborhoods. Puerto Rican kids hung out on the block at all hours, playing music, dancing, sitting on abandoned cars, clustering at the entrance to the elevated subway station and in front of the bodega that sold single cigarettes called loosies. I got jumped a number of times. People were always telling me that if I was robbed, I should hand over my money rather than risk being killed. But I was darned if I was going to give some stranger my hard-earned cash, and I didn’t want to become known in the neighborhood as an easy target, so I always fought back. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. What worked best was to keep my wits about me. Once, as I was getting on the train, some guy tried to grab my purse, but I jerked it back and the strap broke.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  La luz de los avances en la pantalla se refleja en sus ojos, ninguno de los dos se mueve, pero no puedo soportarlo más. Suelta una suave risa. Finalmente extiendo mi mano hacia él. —Soy Jordan. Lamento lo del vino. —¿Jordan? —repite, tomando mi mano y estrechándola—. Un nombre inusual para una chica. —No, en realidad no. —Me relajo contra el asiento y me cruzo de brazos, levantando las rodillas y plantando mis zapatos entre los dos asientos vacíos frente a mí—. Es el nombre del interés romántico de Tom Cruise en Cocktail, ¿recuerdas? Alza las cejas con duda. —¿Cocktail? —repito—. La película de 1988 sobre las acrobacias del barman. —Oh, claro. —Pero tiene esta mirada de inseguridad en sus ojos, y no estoy segura de que sepa de qué demonios le estoy hablando. —¿Te gustan las películas de los 80? —pregunto, apuntando a la película que estamos por ver en la pantalla. —Me gustan las películas de terror —aclara y me ofrece las palomitas—. Esta es un clásico. ¿A ti? —Amo los 80. —Tomo un pequeño puñado y pongo una en mi boca—. Mi novio odia mi gusto para las películas y la música, pero no puedo resistirme. Vengo aquí cuando proyectan algo de la década. Me siento incomoda con la mención al azar del novio, pero no quiero darle una impresión equivocada aquí. Miro rápidamente su mano izquierda, afortunadamente no veo un anillo de bodas. Sería erróneo sentarme aquí con un tipo casado. Pero solo me mira a sabiendas. —¿ Breakfast Club es tu favorita, verdad? —dice—. ¿Y cualquier otra creación de John Hughes? —¿Tienes algo en contra de The Breakfast Club? —Las primeras diez veces que la vi, no. Una sonrisa estira mis labios. Supongo que la pasan mucho por televisión. Se inclina cerca. —Los 80 fueron la época de los héroes de acción —dice, su profunda voz cerca y susurrada—. La gente olvida eso. Arma Letal, Duro de Matar, Terminator, Rambo… —Jean-Claude Van Damne —añado. —Exactamente. Muerdo la esquina de mi boca, así no me rio, pero mi estómago se sacude igual, y dejo salir un resoplido. Frunce el ceño. —¿De qué te ríes? —Nada —respondo rápidamente, asintiendo—. Van Damne. Es un gran actor. Tiene películas muy relevantes. Sin embargo no puedo ocultar la risa de mi rostro, y frunce el ceño sabiendo que soy una mentirosa. Justo entonces escucho una risita desde alguna parte detrás de mí, y giro la cabeza sobre mi hombro, viendo a Jay alejado de la pantalla e inclinándose hacia la chica, besándose abiertamente. —¿Los conoces? —pregunta el hombre a mi lado. Niego. Él no debe saber mis cosas. Nos quedamos en silencio, y termino las palomitas en mi mano, dejando caer mi cabeza hacia atrás mientras miro el techo alto y los antiguos arcos dorados arriba. Él está sentado a mi lado, e inhalo y exhalo lentamente, a pesar del golpeteo en mi pecho. ¿Por qué estoy nerviosa? Es Jay. No, ni siquiera estoy pensando en él en este momento.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Tomorrow, as they say, was still untouched. Then the morrow came. At the first stirring of dawn our Host sprang out of his chamber and awakened us all. He called us together in the yard of the inn, and led us at a slow pace out of Southwark; after a mile or two we reached the little brook known as Saint Thomas a Watering, which is the boundary of the City liberties. He reined in his horse here, and addressed us. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, or should I say fellow pilgrims, I hope you all remember our agreement. I recall it vividly myself. I take it for granted that none of you have changed your minds. Is that not so? Good. Well, who do you think should tell the first story? We agreed that you would all be bound by my decision. Any man or woman who dissents will be obliged to pay all of our expenses. If I am mistaken, then I swear that I will never drink again. The best plan is to draw sticks, before we go any further, and he that picks the shortest will begin.’ We got down from our horses and formed a circle. The Host stood in the middle, with the bundle of sticks in his hand. ‘Sir Knight,’ he said, ‘my lord and master, you will be the first to draw the lot.’ The Knight stepped forward, gracefully accepting his authority, and took a stick. ‘Now, my lady Prioress,’ the Host said, ‘will it please you to come closer to me? And you, sir Clerk, put aside any embarrassment. You do not need to be learned to draw a stick. As for the rest of you, take it in turns.’ And so we all chose our stick. Whether it was by destiny, or providence, or just chance, it turned out that the Knight had chosen the shortest stick. We were all pleased with this piece of luck. It gave us more time to compose our own stories. The first must be the boldest. The Knight would have to tell his tale. That was the agreement. In any case he was not the kind of man to break a promise. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I have been chosen to begin the game. I welcome the challenge, in God’s name, as I welcome all noble challenges. Will it please you to ride forth, and listen to my story?’ So we mounted our horses and crossed the stream. It was called, in those parts, ‘going over the water’. Then the Knight, with a steady and cheerful countenance, began to tell his tale. This is what he said.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  I am just lyin’ here like a spare sack of shit. When he tells the story at college, I’ll look a real knob. So here I go. I am goin’ to follow his example. Fortune favours the brave.’ So he rose quietly, and went up to the baby’s cradle. He lifted it very carefully, and put it at the end of his own bed. Then he waited. After a couple of minutes the miller’s wife stopped snoring and got up to take a piss. When she returned to the bedroom she groped her way around and, just before she got back into bed, she realized that there was no cradle at its foot. ‘God,’ she said to herself, ‘that would have been a joke. I almost went into the students’ bed. Anything could have happened.’ So she felt around until she found the cradle; then she got hold of the bed, and thought that it must be the right one. The cradle was there, wasn’t it? It was dark, of course, and she was still a little fuddled. So she gets into bed next to the clerk, and lays herself down to sleep. But John was not about to let that happen. He got himself ready, wriggled on top of her, and then shafted her. He went for it, hard and deep. He was like a madman. She had not enjoyed herself so much for years. The two northern boys had the time of their lives, too, until they heard the crow of the cock. Dawn would not be far behind. Alan was, to say the least of it, fatigued. He had fucked all night. So he whispered to the miller’s daughter, ‘Goodbye, sweet chuck. The sun is risin’. I can’t stay any longer. But I’ll tell you this much. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I swear to God that you will be me lass.’ ‘Well, lover,’ she replied, ‘I wish you well. But before you go I must tell you one thing. When you go past the mill, look in the right-hand corner behind the door. There you’ll find a half-bushel loaf. Mum and I baked it together, with the meal Dad stole from you. I swear to God, too, that I am sorry.’ She almost broke down in tears. Alan got up, and then thought to himself, ‘I’ll get back into bed with John, for a quick kip.’ So he crept about in the dark, until he found the cradle. ‘I must still be arseholed. Or my head is spinning with all that shaggin’,’ he said to himself. ‘I’ve got the wrong bed. This one has the cradle. I don’t want to lie down with the miller and his wife. It must be the other one.’ So he crept up to the other bed, where the miller was still sleeping on his own. He thought that he was getting in beside John, but of course he was getting close to the miller. It got worse.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  moment. She had wished for a return to the feelings of that first summer—the thrill of being with him, the rush—and now her wish had come true. He said, “Wow ... what have you been up to since January?” Caitlin sent a series of postcards showing stars from old movie musicals. Judy Garland. Cyd Charisse. Jane Powell. Where are they now? she wrote on the back. Are they immortal because they made movies? No answer required. Just think. To be continued. Vix tucked them away in the bottom dresser drawer, next to the photo of Lamb’s parents. She had other things on her mind. She and Bru were daring that summer, testing themselves, testing one another. He finally asked her if there’d been anyone else during their time apart. She told him about Andy. He told her about Star. She cried even though she already knew. When Abby and Lamb went to a wedding in Vermont she brought him to her room at their house, the first time he’d seen it. He walked around touching the shells and rocks, studying the photos of her and Caitlin. She played the tape of them singing “Dancing Queen,” took off her clothes and lay on the bed beckoning to him, pretending to be a bad girl. For the first time he wasn’t interested. “It’s too weird, being in this room,” he told her. “I feel like I’m doing something I’m not supposed to be doing.” That was the point, wasn’t it? She trained the young Dynamo cleaners, wondering if any of them were a team like she and Caitlin once were. She met with clients, organized the office, ordered supplies. She did her job so well Joanne offered to make her a partner after graduation. “Sure you work your butt off through September. But then you get to take it easy. You can marry your guy, have a couple of kids.” Vix didn’t know what to say without hurting Joanne’s feelings. “So maybe it doesn’t require a Harvard degree but you could always teach school during the year if that’s what you want.” The problem was, she didn’t know what she wanted. Except him. She wanted him.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  they were enjoying the game of taunting us too much to make a stand. They rode down to the first switchback and got away. “They’ll be back,” Brian said. “What are we going to do?” I asked. Brian sat thinking, then told me he had a plan. He found some rope under the house and led me up to a clearing in the hillside above Little Hobart Street. A few weeks earlier, Brian and I had dragged an old mattress up there because we were thinking of camping out. Brian explained how we could make a catapult, like the medieval ones we’d read about, by piling rocks on the mattress and rigging it with ropes looped over tree branches. We quickly assembled the contraption and tested it once, jerking back on the ropes at the count of three. It worked—a minor avalanche of rocks rained onto the street below. It was, we were convinced, enough to kill Ernie Goad and his gang, which was what we fully intended to do: kill them and commandeer their bikes, leaving their bodies in the street as a warning to others. We piled the rocks back on the mattress, rerigged the catapult, and waited. After a couple of minutes, Ernie and his gang reappeared at the switchback. Each of them rode one-handed and carried an egg-sized rock in his throwing hand. They were proceeding single file, like a Pawnee war party, a few feet apart. We couldn’t get them all at once, so we aimed for Ernie, who was at the head of the pack. When he came within range, Brian gave the word, and we jerked back on the ropes. The mattress shot forward, and our arsenal of rocks flew through the air. I heard them thud against Ernie’s body and clatter on the road. He screamed and cursed as his bike skidded. The kid behind Ernie ran into him, and they both fell. The other two turned around and sped off. Brian and I started hurling whatever rocks were at hand. Since they were downhill, we had a good line of fire and scored several direct hits, the rocks dinging off their bikes, nicking the paint and denting the fenders. Then Brian yelled, “Charge!” and we came barreling down the hill. Ernie and his friend jumped back on their bikes and furiously pedaled off before we could reach them. As they disappeared around the bend, Brian and I did a victory dance in the rock-strewn street, giving our own war whoops.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  It was, we were convinced, enough to kill Ernie Goad and his gang, which was what we fully intended to do: kill them and commandeer their bikes, leaving their bodies in the street as a warning to others. We piled the rocks back on the mattress, rerigged the catapult, and waited. After a couple of minutes, Ernie and his gang reappeared at the switchback. Each of them rode one-handed and carried an egg-sized rock in his throwing hand. They were proceeding single file, like a Pawnee war party, a few feet apart. We couldn’t get them all at once, so we aimed for Ernie, who was at the head of the pack. When he came within range, Brian gave the word, and we jerked back on the ropes. The mattress shot forward, and our arsenal of rocks flew through the air. I heard them thud against Ernie’s body and clatter on the road. He screamed and cursed as his bike skidded. The kid behind Ernie ran into him, and they both fell. The other two turned around and sped off. Brian and I started hurling whatever rocks were at hand. Since they were downhill, we had a good line of fire and scored several direct hits, the rocks dinging off their bikes, nicking the paint and denting the fenders. Then Brian yelled, “Charge!” and we came barreling down the hill. Ernie and his friend jumped back on their bikes and furiously pedaled off before we could reach them. As they disappeared around the bend, Brian and I did a victory dance in the rock-strewn street, giving our own war whoops. AS THE WEATHER warmed, a sort of rough beauty overtook the steep hillsides around Little Hobart Street. Jack-in-the-pulpits and bleeding hearts sprouted wild. White Queen Anne’s lace and purple phlox and big orange daylilies blossomed along the road. During the winter you could see abandoned cars and refrigerators and the shells of deserted houses in the woods, but in the spring the vines and weeds and moss grew over them, and in no time they disappeared altogether. One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by. Mom really piled up on books. She came home from the Welch public library every week or two with a pillowcase full of novels, biographies, and histories. She snuggled into bed with them, looking up from time to time, saying she was sorry, she knew she should be doing something more productive, but like Dad, she had her addictions, and one of them was reading. We all read, but I never had the feeling of togetherness I’d had in Battle Mountain when we all sat around in the depot with our books. In Welch, people drifted off to different corners of the house. Once night came, we kids all lay in our rope-and-cardboard beds, reading by flashlight or a candle we’d set on our wooden boxes, each of us creating our own little pool of dim light.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  At that point Lori, Brian, and I would create a ruckus to distract the clerk while Mom hid a dress under a raincoat she would be carrying on her arm. We got three or four nice dresses for Maureen that way, but on one excursion, when Brian and I were pretending to punch each other out and Mom was in the process of slipping a dress under her raincoat, the saleslady turned to Mom and asked if she intended to buy that dress she was holding. Mom had no choice but to pay for it. “Fourteen dollars for a child’s dress!” she said as we left the store. “It’s highway robbery!” Dad devised an ingenious way to come up with extra cash. He figured out that when you made a withdrawal from the drive-through window at the bank, it took a few minutes for the transaction to register in the computer. So he would open a bank account, and a week or so later, he would withdraw all the money from a teller inside the bank while Mom withdrew the same amount from the drive-through window. Lori said it sounded outright felonious, but Dad said all he was doing was outsmarting the fat-cat bank owners who shylocked the common man by charging usurious interest rates. “Wear innocent expressions,” Mom told us kids the first time we dropped Dad off in front of the bank. “Will we have to go to a juvenile-delinquent center if we get busted?” I asked. Mom assured me it was all perfectly legal. “People overdraw their accounts all the time,” she said. “If we get caught, we’ll just pay a little overdraft fee.” She explained that it was sort of like taking out a loan without all the messy paperwork. But as we drove up to the teller’s window, Mom seemed to get edgy and giggled nervously as she passed the withdrawal slip through the bulletproof window. I think she was enjoying the thrill of taking from the rich. After the woman inside passed us the cash, Mom drove around to the front of the bank. In a minute, Dad strolled out. He climbed into the front of the car, turned around, and, with a wicked grin, held up a stack of bills and riffled them with his thumb. • • • The reason Dad was having a tough time getting steady work—as he kept trying to tell us—was that the electricians’ union in Phoenix was corrupt. It was run by the mob, he said, which controlled all the construction projects in the city, so before he could get a decent job, he had to run organized crime out of town. That required a lot of undercover research, and the best place to gather information was at the bars the mobsters owned. So Dad started spending most of his time in those joints. Mom rolled her eyes whenever Dad mentioned his research. I began to have my own doubts about what he was up to.