Longing

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 13 of 170 · 20 per page

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I rolled over and looked at the clock: 7:52. My first Culver Creek class, French, started in eighteen minutes. I blinked a couple times and looked up at the Colonel, who was standing between the couch and the COFFEE TABLE, holding his well-worn, once-white tennis shoes by the laces. For a long time, he stared at me, and I stared at him. And then, almost in slow motion, a grin crept across the Colonel’s face. “I’ve got to hand it to them,” he said finally. “That was pretty clever.” “What?” I asked. “Last night—before they woke you up, I guess—they pissed in my shoes.” “Are you sure?” I said, trying not to laugh. “Do you care to smell?” he asked, holding the shoes toward me. “Because I went ahead and smelled them, and yes, I am sure. If there’s one thing I know, it’s when I’ve just stepped in another man’s piss. It’s like my mom always says: ‘Ya think you’s a-walkin’ on water, but turns out you just got piss in your shoes.’ Point those guys out to me if you see them today,” he added, “because we need to figure out why they’re so, uh, pissed at me. And then we need to go ahead and start thinking about how we’re going to ruin their miserable little lives.” — When I received the Culver Creek Handbook over the summer and noticed happily that the “Dress Code” section contained only two words, casual modesty, it never occurred to me that girls would show up for class half asleep in cotton pajama shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. Modest, I guess, and casual. And there was something about girls wearing pajamas (even if modest), which might have made French at 8:10 in the morning bearable, if I’d had any idea what Madame O’Malley was talking about. Comment dis-tu “Oh my God, I don’t know nearly enough French to pass French II” en français? My French I class back in Florida did not prepare me for Madame O’Malley, who skipped the “how was your summer” pleasantries and dove directly into something called the passé composé, which is apparently a verb tense. Alaska sat directly across from me in the circle of desks, but she didn’t look at me once the entire class, even though I could notice little but her.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Westerner there—at last a taste of something real and exotic. Pei Pu, it overwhelming and turned out, had been a well-known actor in Chinese operas and came from separated from the life of a family with connections to the former ruling dynasty. Now he wrote the ground. operas about the workers, but he said this with a look of irony They began —BERNARD BOURISCOUT, IN to meet regularly, Pei Pu showing Bouriscout the sights of Beijing. Bouris- JOYCE WADLER, LIAISON cout loved his stories—Pei Pu talked slowly, and every historical detail seemed to come alive as he spoke, his hands moving to embellish his words. This, he might say, is where the last Ming emperor hung himself, pointing Romance had again come her way personified by a to the spot and telling the story at the same time. Or, the cook in the handsome young German restaurant we just ate in once served in the palace of the last emperor, and officer, Lieutenant Konrad then another magnificent tale would follow. Pei Pu also talked of life in the Friedrich, who called upon her at Neuilly to ask her Beijing Opera, where men often played women's parts, and sometimes be- help. He wanted Pauline came famous for it. [ Bonaparte] to use her 291 298 • The Art of Seduction influence with Napoleon in The two men became friends. Chinese contact with foreigners was re-connection with providing stricted, but they managed to find ways to meet. One evening Bouriscout for the needs of the French tagged along when Pei Pu visited the home of a French official to tutor the troops in the Papal States. He made an instantaneous children. He listened as Pei Pu told them "The Story of the Butterfly," a impression on the princess, tale from the Chinese opera: a young girl yearns to attend an imperial who escorted him around school, but girls are not accepted there. She disguises herself as a boy, passes her garden until they arrived at the rockery. the exams, and enters the school. A fellow student falls in love with her, There she stopped and, and she is attracted to him, so she tells him that she is actually a girl. Like looking into the young most of these tales, the story ends tragically. Pei Pu told it with unusual man's eyes mysteriously, emotion; in fact he had played the role of the girl in the opera. commanded him to return to this same spot at the A few nights later, as they were walking before the gates of the Forbid-same hour next day when den City, Pei Pu returned to "The Story of the Butterfly" "Look at my she might have some good hands," he said, "Look at my face. That story of the butterfly, it is my story news for him. The young officer bowed and took his too." In his slow, dramatic delivery he explained that his mother's first two leave. . . . In his memoirs

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  A few minutes later, while millions of Americans watched, the crew of Apollo 8 began its sixth and final scheduled television broadcast. For nearly a minute, almost nothing appeared onscreen as Anders tried to frame the shot. But then a planet emerged, half lit, half in darkness, and there was no mistaking the swirls of clouds, the grooves of continents, the scoops of oceans. This was Earth, from 110,000 miles away. This, every person could see, was where they lived. Lovell pointed to a storm over South America, the waters around the West Indies, and Florida. Looking through his telescope, he said he could see the central and southern United States. He asked Anders to describe his view. “As I look down on the Earth here from so far out in space,” Anders said, “I think I must have the feeling that the travelers in the old sailing ships used to have—going on a very long voyage away from home, and now we’re headed back, and I have that feeling of being proud of the trip, but still…still happy to be going back home and back to our home port.” —Nineteen hours remained until Apollo 8’s scheduled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. With no major milestones due between now and then, the media was hungry for stories, and they turned to the astronauts’ families to find them. Valerie Anders reported that she was locked to her squawk box. Her son, Alan, was playing with his dog, Luna, and cat, Dudley, while the other Anders kids concentrated on their Christmas presents. Valerie also noted that ten-year-old Glen had mowed the lawn that morning, a job Bill had given him before leaving. Marilyn Lovell reported that she was trying to recover from all the excitement of the past several days. She told how daughter Susan had been jumping on her pogo stick. Susan Borman said she’d spent much of the morning cleaning the house for friends who would join her for reentry and splashdown, and for Frank’s return home. She noted that her two sons, seventeen-year-old Fred and fifteen-year-old Ed, would be helping her with clean-up duties. There was a reason for that. Earlier that day, away from home, Fred and Ed had gotten into a fight, and Ed broke his left thumb throwing a punch to Fred’s head. The boys knew this would be a problem and swore each other to secrecy. When they returned home, Ed walked around hiding his hand from Susan, but the pain only grew worse. The boys sneaked out of the house, drove to NASA, and found a doctor, who X-rayed Ed’s hand. A short time later, Ed left wearing a giant white cast that reached halfway up his forearm. There would be no hiding that from their mother. When they returned home, Susan was angry that they could even think of fighting as their father plummeted toward Earth. At the same time, she was proud that they’d figured out how to handle the problem themselves.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Only, Susan Borman was not at home. To find respite from reporters and commotion, she’d taken her sons to a friend’s house in Houston to eat dinner and watch the telecast in peace. There, she thought back to 1951, to the only time she and Frank had ever been separated at Christmas. Frank had been ordered to the Philippines for fighter pilot training. On Christmas Eve, his transport ship stopped in Hawaii. He’d never missed Susan more than on that night, nor she him. Susan presumed she wouldn’t hear from Frank for days, but he resolved to find a phone. Only the Royal Hawaiian Hotel had one in the vicinity, so Frank went into the phone booth in the lobby, dialed the operator, and asked to place a call to Arizona. “I’m sorry, all the phone lines have been booked for months,” the operator told him. Years later, Frank would remember this as the lowest moment of his life to that point. A well-dressed gentleman must have noticed the expression on his face. “What’s wrong, Lieutenant?” he asked. Borman explained. The man introduced himself as the hotel manager, then gave Frank a key and told him to use the phone in one of the rooms. “Talk as long as you want,” he said. Frank offered money but the man refused. Soon, Frank and Susan were talking and saying “I love you” and wishing each other a merry Christmas. Their call lasted for more than an hour. Now, seventeen years later to the day, Susan remembered that call, and how close she had felt to Frank despite their distance, and from outer space, Frank remembered it, too. —One of Apollo 8’s objectives was to investigate the effects of mass concentrations, or “mascons,” on a spacecraft’s orbit. These areas of increased density in the Moon’s crust, primarily caused by massive asteroid impacts, subtly altered a ship’s trajectory (by changing the gravity field) and, if not compensated for, would eventually cause it to crash into the lunar surface. As it looked now to Mission Control, the mascons were detectable, but their effect on Apollo 8 was slight. Future lunar modules, however, would be flying much lower, and be more subject to their influence. As the spacecraft traveled yet again behind the Moon, one hour remained until the broadcast. Even now, the astronauts weren’t sure how they wanted to run it. “I don’t think we ought to screw around with this,” Borman told his crewmates. “We’ve got to do it up right because there will be more people listening to this than ever listened to any other single person in history.” They had long known that they would need words worthy of the moment. The astronauts had tossed around ideas in the weeks leading up to the flight, but none had seemed appropriate. They considered telling a Christmas story, but the flight was important not just to Christians but to all faiths, and to humanity.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  In Timber Cove, Marilyn Lovell’s concern had shifted to her son, Jay, who had begun to complain of stomach pains. Spiriting him to a neighbor’s car and hiding him under blankets to avoid being trailed by the media, she drove to NASA, where doctors attributed his symptoms to the excitement that comes from having a father on his way to the Moon. While Marilyn and Jay were gone, two-year-old Jeffrey did his best to stand in for his mother, opening the door and answering questions from reporters while wearing a plaid jumper and his toy astronaut helmet, occasionally looking skyward in case his dad flew by. Now 186,000 miles above him, Apollo 8 was at precisely the distance at which it took light (and radio transmissions) one full second to reach Earth. If Jeffrey had seen his father flying by, the image would have come from history, not the present. By the looks of things, Apollo 8 was in cruise mode, so Valerie Anders decided to visit Mission Control—for a change of scenery, and to feel closer to Bill. There she took George Low’s hand and told him how grateful she was that Bill and his crewmates were being looked after so well. Low’s blend of intellect and calm had made him a favorite of Valerie’s, and his was the perfect hand to hold while she watched the green blip on the distant screen inch closer to the Moon. A few minutes later, she heard Bill announce that he was going to “take a little snooze here for a while” and then sign off. She smiled and whispered something to a NASA official, who walked over to the public affairs officer, who in turn walked over to Collins. Shortly after that, Collins radioed to Borman aboard Apollo 8. “Paul tells me Valerie is over here and wishes Bill a happy nap.” “Okay, thank you,” Borman answered. “Tell her that he makes us tired sometimes, too, will you?” Collins laughed. “Roger. I will deliver a modified version of the message.” —At 53 hours into the flight, the guidance and trajectory specialists in Houston were delighted by the precision of the journey. After Apollo 8 left Earth orbit, Houston had planned for up to four midcourse corrections for the coast to the Moon. But the first, accomplished during the brief test of the SPS engine about eleven hours into the flight, had been so accurate that the next two were dispensed with. Now, as they neared the Moon, only one tiny adjustment would be required, and that would use the spacecraft’s small control thrusters. The second live television broadcast was scheduled to begin in an hour. Despite the best advice from experts—on filters, lenses, switches, brackets, interior lighting, and exposure levels—Borman remained skeptical. “I bet the TV doesn’t work,” he told Collins. Just before 3:00 P .M . EST, with Apollo 8 at an altitude of 200,000 miles, the crew got ready to transmit.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Barbados, where Anglicanism survived through the 1650s as an established Church.3 Yet after 1660, the Virginian colonists’ theoretical love of bishops was not ardent enough to lend much support to proposals to establish a bishop on their side of the Atlantic, let alone any system of English-style church courts. They made sure that their parishes were run by powerful ‘vestries’ of laypeople rather than clergymen. Virginian Anglicanism was thus made safe for gentry who appreciated a decent and edifying but not overdramatic performance of the Prayer Book, and the colony continued much more reminiscent of the hierarchical countryside of Old England than any of the other more northern English ventures. These northern colonies saw the early Stuart Church of England as too flawed to be truly God’s Church. America was often not the first choice of these settlers when they looked for somewhere to build a purer community. Some migrated to the Protestant United Provinces of the Netherlands, as discontented English godly folk had done since the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, but however godly the atmosphere in this properly reformed Church setting, there was little land to spare, and rather too many Dutch people. Ireland offered better possibilities, but by the late 1620s Charles I had an unfriendly eye on potentially subversive settlers from England; when in 1632 his aggressive Lord Deputy, the Earl of Strafford, arrived to lead the government in Dublin, he even made major concessions to Irish Roman Catholics. So the best alternative was in the new lands of America. The godly ventured far to the north of Virginia, in an area of forests and deep sea inlets soon named New England. The first colony in this northern region, Plymouth in what later became part of Massachusetts, was founded in 1620, by separatists who made no bones about their wish to isolate themselves completely from corrupt English religion. This group, since the nineteenth century commonly given the celebratory title the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’, had first migrated as a single congregation to the Netherlands, but now sought a less restricting place, to become a ‘civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation’.4 For all its subsequent fame in American mythology, the settlement remained small and poor, for not many wished to join the Pilgrims; they made their brave voyage in the years before the group around William Laud achieved power in England. Notably, for all their intense practice of piety, there was no clergyman among them for the first nine years of Plymouth’s existence; the sacrament of the Eucharist was not among their devotional priorities. The impulse during the 1630s was different: the ‘Arminian’ innovations of Charles I’s regime encouraged many gentry, clergy and ordinary people who had no inclination to separatism to risk the long Atlantic voyage. Up to the 1630s

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  The proudly maintained Syriac Orthodox church of St George in Aleppo boasts a pastiche-Assyrian bas-relief of King Abgar receiving the Mandylion (see pp. 180–81), as well a reproduction of the version of the Mandylion in Rome, presented to the congregation by the Pope himself. There are also two touching and unexpected relics of old Edessa: the church bell and a massive crystal chandelier, both given to the Edessan Christians by Queen-Empress Victoria of the United Kingdom. What trouble it must have taken to transport these unwieldy objects over the border amid the chaos and terror of 1924! Yet one can understand why. The British Empire then seemed a possible protector for an eventual return to the homeland and these would be useful symbols for an appeal to the British. The Urfalese Christians were not to know all was not what it seemed with that great imperial power. GREAT BRITAIN: THE LAST YEARS OF CHRISTIAN EMPIRE It was not yet publicly apparent that victorious Great Britain had been seriously undermined by the conflict of 1914–18. Its empire was augmented by virtually all of Germany’s colonial possessions, together with large sections of the Ottoman Empire, mostly in the guise of ‘mandates’ from the newly established League of Nations, plus some client kingdoms. Alone among the major combatants in the European war, Britain retained its pre-war combination of monarchy and distinct national established Churches – Anglican in England, Presbyterian in Scotland – so its Christianity, lacking the shock of defeat or regime change, had a greater inclination to enjoy the luxury of moderation than elsewhere. Yet Britain could not escape the general trauma of the war. Sensible British politicians saw that British power was not what it had been, particularly in relation to their belated war ally, the United States. As the world’s largest imperial power, Britain was bound to be affected by the general perception among colonized peoples that they had been dragged into a conflict which was not their concern. Whatever moral authority their colonial masters possessed was severely tarnished, and that did not bode well for Britain’s comparatively recent worldwide imperial project. Moreover, the British Isles themselves were poisoned by a civil war which the general war had only postponed, and whose origins were religious, in Ireland. The Protestants, predominant in the north- eastern Irish counties of Ulster, refused to accept any deal for Home Rule across the island which would leave them in the hands of a Roman Catholic majority, and open violence broke out only a few months after the worldwide Armistice of November 1918.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  in the balance of power between the sexes. It became the expectation that girls would receive as good an education as boys; indeed, over the next decades, it became apparent that in many circumstances girls achieved better results at school. Women began discovering past generations of female writers often then languishing unpublished and unstudied, and found that such pioneers as Mary Astell more than two centuries before (see pp. 793–4) had already provided the arguments which they were discovering for themselves. A word had been coined in 1882 for this consciousness: feminism.46 Its inventor, Hubertine Auclert, had campaigned in France for women’s political rights at a time when women were asserting their right to take initiatives and exercise leadership in a variety of ways, largely within the context of the Christian Church (see pp. 818–20 and 828–30). Auclert herself had left behind her family’s Catholic piety for a French Republican anticlericalism. Now, a century later, feminism was decisively moving beyond its Christian roots to a ‘second wave’, a more general assertion, not of particular spheres of action such as prophecy or temperance campaigning, but of equality of opportunity and activity in society. Since it was becoming less easy to see why women and men should not pursue the same occupations in later life, surely that must apply in the Church as well as beyond it? What would happen to the formation of Christian theology if women joined in what had overwhelmingly been a male task for twenty centuries? We have observed that at intervals the Holy Spirit has been described in female terms through Christian history, but it was rare for the other persons of the Trinity to be conceived without the language of Fatherhood and Sonship. Authority in the Church seemed to have been concentrated in the male gender – although careful scrutiny of the early Church’s history now revealed significant exceptions to this generalization.47 It had been difficult enough for many Churches to get past St Paul’s admonitions against women holding positions of leadership or even speaking in church, but now there gathered strength a movement to open the ordained ministry of Churches to women, an impulse which had previously only appeared in the most resolutely unhierarchical of Churches, such as Quakers and Congregationalists. Even the episcopal Anglican Communion became involved in the struggle, following a precocious precedent in 1944: in the extraordinary circumstances of the Japanese occupation of China, the Bishop of Hong Kong first conferred priestly orders on a woman, Florence Lee Tim Oi, to much worldwide Anglican surprise and episcopal scolding. With great self-abnegation, Lee Tim Oi ceased to exercise her orders and bided her time until the world and the Church changed.48 New Zealand, a conservative, inward-looking society which has nevertheless repeatedly displayed a remarkable capacity to create social change

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  picture of Christ’s coming was ‘premillennial’ and not post-millennial like Edwards’s (see p. 759), and it did not encourage any sunny Enlightenment optimism about human prospects: only Christ could effectively change the world, not human effort. Premillennialism stressed division and separation within society, to gather in the elect, and its frostiness to Enlightenment projects of social reform contributed to that peculiar process by which ‘liberal’ has become a word of abuse in the United States, in sharp contrast to its esteem in European society. From the 1870s, this theology was promoted through the series of semi-institutional conferences held at Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada and Keswick in northern England, and other gatherings connected with them (or often deliberately not connected – premillennialists have a habit of falling out with each other).120 This was the milieu which also bred the defensive proclamations of the Fundamentalist movement (see pp. 862–3). Amid this clash of Evangelicalisms, there remained the longing of Protestant blacks for full acceptance in American society, a widespread weariness at denominational barriers amid so much shared Evangelical rhetoric and an equally widespread instinct that Protestant emphasis on sermons and the intellectual understanding of the word of God did not give enough room for human emotion. Around 1900, speaking in ‘tongues’ began playing a major role: in a new enactment of the first Christian Pentecost described in Acts 2, ‘tongues’ created messages unrecognizable to the uninitiated, and expressing praise or worship to those within the community. The precedent was once more Irving’s Catholic Apostolic Church, because it had first emerged from the excitement generated by the ‘tongues’ exhibited by the Scottish sisters Isabella and Mary Campbell (see p. 829). When Irving broke with the Church of Scotland, his newly founded Church continued the practice of speaking in tongues until the end of the 1870s, although it began fencing the practice around in 1847. The free expression of tongues had been effectively frozen out by an unpredictable development in the Catholic Apostolics’ Church life, their penchant for some of the most elaborate liturgical ritual ever invented by a Western Church.121 The Catholic Apostolic Church itself was gradually killed off by its apocalyptic refusal to provide for ordination of subsequent generations of clergy after the first.122 Yet the Catholic Apostolic example was not forgotten and splinter groups from it carried on the tradition of tongues. There were other remarkable outbreaks of the same phenomenon around the world – for instance, in the Russian Empire in the 1850s during the Crimean War – a reflection of Christianity’s growing globalization and the effects of sudden change in previously stable religious landscapes.123 Here was an unstable balance of incompatible forces (who could be more incompatible than Arminians and

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  While there, she was offered a contract with the Ford Modeling Agency in New York, which she declined. During quiet moments, Borman wondered if he’d made the mistake of a lifetime by letting her go. In the summer of 1949, Borman was one of a select few cadets chosen to tour postwar Germany. For him, the biggest impression came at the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. There, he saw the firing range and gallows used to execute Jewish prisoners, and the ovens used to cremate them. And he saw families, East German refugees, living in tiny stalls in the barracks, separated from other families only by hanging blankets; these were people who’d chosen to give up everything and flee to the West rather than live under Communist rule. The trip sickened and saddened him, and it reinforced his certainty that America was a force for good in the world, a country that stepped up to help suffering people and defend freedom. When Borman returned from Germany, he only missed Susan more. She had returned to Tucson after earning her degree, and was chosen over seventy-one other contestants as the city’s representative at a Mardi Gras festival in Mexico. The local newspaper showed her draped in a silver-blue mink cape and wearing over a thousand dollars’ worth of silver and turquoise. In case Borman had forgotten what he’d lost, the newspaper noted that the selection was based on “beauty, poise, personality, charm, and intellect.” Borman graduated eighth in a class of six hundred seventy at West Point. It was a beautiful ceremony, but all he could see were the swarms of girlfriends and fiancées who’d come to shower love on his classmates. His only comfort came from knowing he’d been among those selected for a coveted spot in Air Force flight training, and from driving his parents back to Arizona in the new car he’d purchased, a blue Oldsmobile Rocket 88 stretch coupe with a V-8 engine and a bench seat in back. Borman had sixty days’ leave before reporting for flight training at Perrin Air Force Base in Sherman, Texas. On the first of those days back in Tucson, he called Susan and asked her to dinner. They hadn’t had a date in ages, and she still had hurt feelings from their breakup of three years ago, but she agreed. He took her to a small Italian restaurant on the outskirts of town. They laughed and talked and connected as if they were still in high school; even the owner could see their chemistry because he kept feeding the jukebox and pressing the love song buttons. Borman didn’t waver this time, he did what he’d been wanting to do for years—he asked Susan to be his wife. There was no talk of the challenges of a military life or the risks he’d be taking as a fighter pilot.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  He stared at her stiffened spine and couldn’t hold back the feelings that twisted and writhed inside him. He clenched his jaw, forcibly withholding the reassurances she obviously wanted, and deserved, to hear. Only minutes ago they’d shared a blinding closeness, and now they were no more than awkward strangers. Instead of bringing ease from his restless agitation, the gulf between them ripped him deeply. Miserable, he left without a word, the door shutting behind him with an unmistakable click of finality. Olivia woke to the feel of a steady breeze. From the rolling view outside the windows, she knew they’d raised sail. She looked around the room and found herself alone. Phoenix had not returned the evening before, nor, it appeared, after she’d retired for the night. There was a knock at the door, and her heart leapt as she rushed to answer it, eager to see Phoenix again. Instead it was Maggie who stood there. The abigail entered with a bright smile, unaware of her mistress’s disappointment. Olivia tried to hold her tongue, but her curiosity won out. “Have you seen Captain Phoenix about today?” “Aye,” Maggie said with a cheerful lilt. “Early this morning, before he went with the Seawitch. We’re on our way, milady. The crew said we should put into port in Barbados within a few days.” The Seawitch. Olivia’s heart plummeted into her stomach. Phoenix had moved to her father’s ship to get away from her, that was painfully obvious. Her face heated with embarrassment. He most likely thought her the worst sort of wanton. And hadn’t she been? Wretched, she shook her head. She’d been mindless with desire, but the pirate certainly had not felt the same. He’d had the presence of mind to keep her maidenhead intact, a circumstance that said clearly he did not desire to take her as his wife. He would escort her to England, obtain his annulment, and sail off without looking back. She, on the other hand, would spend her days pining for the husband she hadn’t wanted, only to discover he was all she wanted. Olivia spent the three days it took to reach Barbados ensconced in Phoenix’s cabin. Bored and crying miserably every time she remembered her abandoned behavior, she resorted to snooping to distract herself. Rifling through his drawers, desk, and cupboards, she found ribbon-bound letters from the Marquess of Dunsmore addressed to Sebastian Blake. She found legal documents that bore his seal and wanted posters displaying his alias. She’d strongly suspected, of course, or she would never have given her favors so freely. But by the end of the three days, she had no doubt. She was married to a pirate. The thought thrilled her. Now she needed to discover a way to keep him. Chapter Three

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  would be first to the Moon, “and I want to be on the first team.” In Houston, Lovell took up residence in old World War II barracks at Ellington Air Force Base, where residents lived four to a unit and had bedsheets for walls. His family soon followed and before long, Marilyn found a house to rent in a nearby suburb. For seven-year-old Jay Lovell, that was the perfect setup: Ellington was just a few minutes away, and his dad was only too happy to take him along to the airfield to watch the training he and the other astronauts were doing in their T-38 jets. Jay loved it when his dad retracted the landing gear and kept flying just a few feet off the ground, but he stood awestruck when his father once did something radically different. On that day, Lovell pointed the jet straight up after takeoff, and as Jay watched asphalt fly and ground crew scurry, he could see that his dad was aiming right for the Moon. As Lovell learned his way around his new job and his new city, Marilyn settled the family into their new home in a small Houston subdivision called Timber Cove. The sudden celebrity that came with being an astronaut startled both of them. People even recognized Marilyn around town. Lovell understood the slight resentment he and some of the other new astronauts detected from the Original Seven; the new guys hadn’t even entered a spacecraft yet, so who were they to soak up America’s adoration? Soon enough, though, the veterans warmed to the rookies. Once, when Lovell needed a ride, Alan Shepard told him to jump into his brand- new 1963 Corvette, a car that had come complete with the astronaut’s name engraved on a plaque. Shepard had the top down and opened the throttle on I-45 in Houston, showing Lovell what speed really meant. “Boy, how much do these things cost?” Lovell asked. “If you gotta ask, you can’t afford one,” Shepard replied. Lovell made a mental note: Get one. In 1964, Lovell got his first assignment, as one of the two-man backup crew for Gemini 4. His partner would be Frank Borman, whom he’d met during medical exams of astronaut hopefuls. Slayton had named Borman the commander, Lovell the copilot. To Lovell, that didn’t seem quite fair; they were about the same rank, and he couldn’t see why Borman was any more qualified to assume responsibility for a flight than he. But no matter who was commander, there was wonderful news in the assignment. By Slayton’s scheme, Lovell and Borman would be the primary crew for

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Sebastian felt his chest constrict painfully and his cock grow heavy with need. “You would do that?” he asked gruffly. “Live on a ship with me, without a home?” “My home is with you.” Her slender fingers encircled his wrist and moved his hand down between her legs. Then she curled her fingers over his to cup her sex. “You’re so tense, restless like a caged panther.” She arched her hips into his hand, rubbing herself against his splayed fingers. “Allow me to give you ease and help you relax. We can discuss everything in the morning.” Eyes closed, he pressed his mouth into her hair. “I don’t trust myself with you. Not at this moment.” He was so furious and disgusted, he could barely breathe, and with her body undulating against his hand, all he wanted was to throw her on her back and fuck her until he couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. “I know you’re angry and frustrated, but you’d never hurt me.” With a perverse need to argue, he spoke harshly. “You know nothing of me. I attacked your ship just for the amusement of it. Perhaps I’d have even raped you if you weren’t willing.” “Oh, Sebastian.” Olivia sighed. “If you wish to argue rather than make love, I suppose I can accommodate you. But at least be honest. You took my ship without the loss of one life. And rape?” She shot him an amused glance. “A man of your outrageous beauty would have no need. ’Tis lucky for you I am your wife, or I might have raped you.” He scowled, even as his soul ached with longing. “You said I was a long-haired savage.” “Heavens, you didn’t believe that?” She stepped away from his flexing fingers and moved to the small circular table in the corner. Pouring a large ration of brandy from the decanter, she brought it to him with a provocative sway to her hips, her golden curls tumbling past her waist. “You are the most decadent-looking man I’ve ever seen, Sebastian Blake. Dark as sin, more beautiful and seductive than the devil himself, I would imagine. I would not change a thing about you. It amazes me every morning when I wake up and look at you lying beside me. I pinch myself regularly to be certain I’m not dreaming—that you’re actually mine, that I bear your name and title.” Her eyes locked on his as her voice lowered seductively. “That I’ll bear your children.” Sebastian took the glass from her, his hand trembling, downing the liquor in one swallow. “You sound as if you received the better half of the bargain.” “I did.” Moving away, Olivia shrugged out of her robe and left it behind her on the floor. She reached the bed and leaned against the edge. “I am assuming by the bulge in your breeches that you wish me to stay in your room tonight.”

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  think it’d be inhabited or not.” “Don’t see anybody waving, is that what you’re saying?” Collins replied. “I was just kind of curious whether I would land on the blue or the brown part of the Earth,” Lovell said. “You better hope we land on the blue part,” Anders chimed in, causing an eruption of laughter at Mission Control. Near the end of the twenty-two-minute telecast, Collins asked Borman a question millions of people had on their minds. “How about the Moon, Frank? Is it visible through one of your other windows? Could you get it visible with a small maneuver?” “Negative,” Borman answered. “I think we’ll have to save the Moon for another time.” A few minutes later, the show came to a close. So compelling was the view of Earth that the crew hadn’t once thought to turn the camera on themselves. “Okay, Earth,” Borman said. “This is Apollo 8 signing off for today.” And with that, the astronauts disappeared back into the sky. — The astronauts’ younger children dispersed when the broadcast ended, running outside to play, fixing sandwiches in the kitchen, pulling toys from their toy chests. Hearing the clamor of the reporters on their lawns, Susan and Valerie went outside their homes to answer questions from the press. Only Marilyn didn’t move from her spot in front of the television. She just stared at the screen, trying to process the distance between her and her husband. Focus at Mission Control turned to the giant projection screens at the front of the room. By the estimates of trajectory and orbital mechanics specialists, Apollo 8 was about to cross what some called the equigravisphere, the point at which Earth and Moon exert an equal pull of gravity. It had taken until now, about five-sixths of the way to the Moon, to reach the equigravisphere, a testament to the dominance of Earth in its finely balanced relationship with its smaller satellite. There

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  might be: a young poet who had frequented her salon for several years, at her throat. Yet first she Charles Baudelaire. He seemed shy, in fact had hardly spoken to her, but confessed in conscience, repented and asked God's she had read some of his poetry, and although the poems in the letters were pardon; she accused herself more polished, the style was similar. At her apartment Baudelaire would al-of having sinned against ways sit politely in a corner, but now that she thought of it, he would smile the one she knew had always been hers, and who at her strangely, nervously. It was the look of a young man in love. Now would still be, were he when he visited she watched him carefully, and the more she watched, the alive. . . . She counted all surer she was that he was the writer, but she never confirmed her intuition, of the unkindnesses and because she did not want to confront him—he might be shy, but he was a recalled each individual unkindness; she noted man, and at some point he would have to come to her. And she felt certain every one, and repeated that he would. Then, suddenly the letters stopped coming—and Madame often: "Oh misery! What Sabatier could not understand why, since the last one had been even more was I thinking, when my lover came before me and I adoring than all of the others before. did not deign to welcome Several years went by, in which she often thought of her anonymous him, nor even care to admirer's letters, but they were never renewed. In 1857, however, Baude-listen! Was I not a fool to refuse to speak or even look laire published a book of poetry, The Flowers of Evil, and Madame Sabatier at him? A fool? No, so recognized several of the verses—they were the ones he had written for help me God, I was cruel her. Now they were out in the open for everyone to see. A little while later and deceitful! . . . 7 believe the poet sent her a gift: a specially bound copy of the book, and a letter, that it was I alone who struck him that mortal this time signed with his name. Yes, he wrote, he was the anonymous blow. When he came writer—would she forgive him for being so mysterious in the past? happily before me expecting Furthermore, his feelings for her were as strong as ever: "You didn't think me to receive him joyfully and I shunned him and for a moment that I could have forgotten you? . . . You to me are more would never even look at than a cherished image conjured up in dream, you're my superstition . . . him, was this not a mortal my constant companion, my secret! Farewell, dear Madame. I kiss your blow? At that moment, when I refused to speak, I hands with profound devotion."

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  1951, to the only time she and Frank had ever been separated at Christmas. Frank had been ordered to the Philippines for fighter pilot training. On Christmas Eve, his transport ship stopped in Hawaii. He’d never missed Susan more than on that night, nor she him. Susan presumed she wouldn’t hear from Frank for days, but he resolved to find a phone. Only the Royal Hawaiian Hotel had one in the vicinity, so Frank went into the phone booth in the lobby, dialed the operator, and asked to place a call to Arizona. “I’m sorry, all the phone lines have been booked for months,” the operator told him. Years later, Frank would remember this as the lowest moment of his life to that point. A well-dressed gentleman must have noticed the expression on his face. “What’s wrong, Lieutenant?” he asked. Borman explained. The man introduced himself as the hotel manager, then gave Frank a key and told him to use the phone in one of the rooms. “Talk as long as you want,” he said. Frank offered money but the man refused. Soon, Frank and Susan were talking and saying “I love you” and wishing each other a merry Christmas. Their call lasted for more than an hour. Now, seventeen years later to the day, Susan remembered that call, and how close she had felt to Frank despite their distance, and from outer space, Frank remembered it, too. — One of Apollo 8’s objectives was to investigate the effects of mass concentrations, or “mascons,” on a spacecraft’s orbit. These areas of increased density in the Moon’s crust, primarily caused by massive asteroid impacts, subtly altered a ship’s trajectory (by changing the gravity field) and, if not compensated for, would eventually cause it to crash into the lunar surface. As it looked now to Mission Control, the mascons were detectable, but their effect on Apollo 8 was slight. Future lunar modules, however, would be flying much lower, and be more subject to their influence. As the spacecraft traveled yet again behind the Moon, one hour remained until the broadcast. Even now, the astronauts weren’t sure how they wanted to run it. “I don’t think we ought to screw around with this,” Borman told his crewmates. “We’ve got to do it up right because there will be more people

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In 1806, when Prussia and France were at war, Auguste, the handsome twenty-four-year-old prince of Prussia and nephew of Frederick the Great, was captured by Napoleon. Instead of locking him up, Napoleon allowed him to wander around French territory, keeping a close watch on him through spies. The prince was devoted to pleasure, and spent his time Reichardt had seen Juliette moving from town to town, seducing young girls. In 1807 he decided to at another ball, protesting visit the Château de Coppet, in Switzerland, where lived the great French coyly that she would not writer Madame de Stae'l. dance, and then, after a while, throwing off her Auguste was greeted by his hostess with as much ceremony as she could heavy evening gown, to muster. After she had introduced him to her other guests, they all retired to reveal a light dress a drawing room, where they talked of Napoleon's war in Spain, the current underneath. On all sides, there were murmurs and Paris fashions, and so on. Suddenly the door opened and another guest en- whisperings about her tered, a woman who had somehow stayed in her room during the hubbub coquetry and affectation. of the prince's entrance. It was the thirty-year-old Madame Récamier, As ever, she wore white satin, cut very low in the Madame de Staël's closest friend. She introduced herself to the prince, then back, revealing her quickly retired to her bedroom. charming shoulders. The Auguste had known that Madame Récamier was at the château. In fact men implored her to dance for them. . . . To soft he had heard many stories about this infamous woman, who, in the years music she floated into the after the French Revolution, was considered the most beautiful in France. room in her diaphanous Men had gone wild over her, particularly at balls when she would take off Greek robe. Her head was bound with a muslin fichu. her evening wrap, revealing the diaphanous white dresses that she had made She bowed timidly to the famous, and dance with such abandon. The painters Gérard and David had audience, and then, immortalized her face and fashions, and even her feet, considered the most spinning round lightly, she shook a transparent scarf beautiful anyone had ever seen; and she had broken the heart of Lucien with her fingertips, so that Bonaparte, the Emperor Napoleon's brother. Auguste liked his girls in turns it billowed into the younger than Madame Récamier, and he had come to the château to rest. semblance of a drapery, a But those few moments in which she had stolen the scene with her sudden veil, a cloud. All this with a strange blend of precision

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  words as an intoxicating drug that will make people emotional and con-H O N G A N D E D N A H . H O N G fused. Keep your language vague and ambiguous, letting your listeners fill in the gaps with their fantasies and imaginings. Instead of tuning you out, getting irritated or defensive, being impatient for you to shut up, they will be pliant, happy with your sweet-sounding words. Use the Demonic Power of Words to Sow Confusion • 255 Seductive Writing Let wax pave the way for you, spread out on smooth tablets, \ Let wax go before One spring afternoon in the late 1830s, in a street in Copenhagen, a as witness to your mind— man named Johannes caught a glimpse of a beautiful young girl. Self- \ Bring her your flattering absorbed yet delightfully innocent, she fascinated him, and he followed her, words, words that ape the from a distance, and found out where she lived. Over the next few weeks lover: \ And remember, whoever you are, to throw he made inquiries and found out more about her. Her name was Cordelia in some good \ Entreaties. Wahl, and she lived with her aunt. The two led a quiet existence; Cordelia Entreaties are what made liked to read, and to be alone. Seducing young girls was Johannes's specialty, Achilles give back \ Hector's Body to Priam; but Cordelia would be a catch: she had already turned down several eligible even an angry god \ Is suitors. moved by the voice of Johannes imagined that Cordelia might hunger for something more prayer. Make promises, what's the harm in \ out of life, something grand, something resembling the books she had Promising? Here's where read and the daydreams that presumably filled her solitude. He arranged anyone can play rich.... an introduction and began to frequent her house, accompanied by a friend \ A persuasive letter's \ The thing to lead off with, of his named Edward. This young man had his own thoughts of court- explore her mind, \ ing Cordelia, but he was awkward, and strained to please her. Johannes, Reconnoiter the landscape. on the other hand, virtually ignored her, instead befriending her aunt. A message scratched on an They would talk about the most banal things—farm life, whatever was in apple \ Betrayed Cydippe: she was snared by her own the news. Occasionally Johannes would veer off into a more philosophical words. \ My advice, then, discussion, for he had noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that on these young men of Rome, is to occasions Cordelia would listen to him closely, while still pretending to lis- learn the noble \ Advocate's arts—n ot only to let you ten to Edward. defend \ Some trembling This went on for several weeks. Johannes and Cordelia barely spoke, client: a woman, no less but he could tell that he intrigued her, and that Edward irritated her to no than the populace, \ Elite

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  could not completely avoid him over the next few days, and she saw that he BRIAN SINGER seemed paler than ever. He was polite, and a whole day might pass without her seeing him, but these brief absences had a paradoxical effect: now Tourvel realized what had happened. She missed him, she wanted to see him. This paragon of virtue and goodness had somehow fallen in love with an incorrigible rake. Disgusted with herself and what she had allowed to Disarm Through Strategic Weakness and Vulnerability • 289 happen, she left the château in the middle of the night, without telling The old American proverb anyone, and headed for Paris, where she planned somehow to repent this says if you want to con someone, you must first get awful sin. him to trust you, or at least feel superior to you (these two ideas are related), and Interpretation. The character of Valmont in Choderlos de Laclos's get him to let down his guard. The proverb epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons is based on several of the great real-life explains a great deal about libertines of eighteenth-century France. Everything Valmont does is calcu- television commercials. If lated for effect—the ambiguous actions that make Tourvel curious about we assume that people are not stupid, they must react him, the act of charity in the village (he knows he is being followed), the to TV commercials with a return visit to the château, the paleness of his face (he is having an affair feeling of superiority that with a girl at the château, and their all-night carousals give him a wasted permits them to believe they are in control. As long look). Most devastating of all is his positioning of himself as the weak one, as this illusion of volition the seduced, the victim. How can the Présidente imagine he is manipulat- persists, they would ing her when everything suggests he is simply overwhelmed by her beauty, consciously have nothing to whether physical or spiritual? He cannot be a deceiver when he repeatedly fear from the commercials. People are prone to trust makes a point of confessing the "truth" about himself: he admits that his anything over which they charity was questionably motivated, he explains why he has gone astray, he believe they have lets her in on his emotions. (All of this "honesty," of course, is calculated.) control. . . . • TV commercials appear foolish, In essence he is like a woman, or at least like a woman of those times— clumsy, and ineffectual on emotional, unable to control himself, moody, insecure. She is the one who purpose. They are made to is cold and cruel, like a man. In positioning himself as Tourvel's victim, Val- appear this way at the conscious level in order to

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Finally, words are important in seduction, and have a great deal of power to confuse, distract, and boost the vanity of the target. But what is most seductive in the long run is what you do not say, what you communicate indirectly. Words come easily, and people distrust them. Anyone can say the right words; and once they are said, nothing is binding, and they may even be forgotten altogether. The gesture, the thoughtful gift, the little details seem much more real and substantial. They are also much more charming than lofty words about love, precisely because they speak for themselves and let the seduced read into them more than is there. Never tell someone what you are feeling; let them guess it in your looks and gestures. That is the more convincing language. 276 • The Art of Seduction Symbol: The Banquet. A feast has been prepared in your honor. Everything has been elaborately coordinated— the flowers, the decorations, the selection of guests, the dancers, the music, the five-course meal, the endlessly flowing wine. The Banquet loosens your tongue, and also your inhibitions. Reversal There is no reversal. Details are essential to any successful seduction, and cannot be ignored. Poeticize Your Presence Important things happen when your targets are alone: the slightest feeling of relief that you are not there, and it is all over. Fa- miliarity and overexposure will cause this reaction. Remain elusive, then, so that when you are away, they will yearn to see you again, and will associate you only with pleasant thoughts. Occupy their minds by alternating an excit- ing presence with a cool dis- tance, exuberant moments followed by calculated absences. Associate yourself with poetic images and objects, so that when they think of you, they begin to see you through an idealized halo. The more you figure in their minds, the more they will envelop you in seductive fantasies. Feed these fantasies by subtle inconsistencies and changes in your behavior. Poetic Presence/Absence In 1943, the Argentine military overthrew the government. A popular forty-eight-year old colonel, Juan Perón, was named secretary of labor and social affairs. Perón was a widow who had a fondness for young girls; at the time of his appointment he was involved with a teenager whom he introduced to one and all as his daughter. One evening in January of 1944, Perón was seated among the other military leaders in a Buenos Aires stadium, attending an artists' festival. It He who does not know how to encircle a girl so was late and there were some empty seats around him; out of nowhere two that she loses sight of beautiful young actresses asked his permission to sit down. Were they jok- everything he does not ing? He would be delighted. He recognized one of the actresses—it was want her to see, he who Eva Duarte, a star of radio soap operas whose photograph was often on the does not know how to poetize himself into a girl