Mom steps away from the CD player and as the music spins to life I think: Oh fuck me, please no. It’s Michael Bolton’s cover of “When a Man Loves a Woman,” from the world’s most undeserving greatest hits collection . . .
Green Lake in the hour before dawn: Seattle’s beautiful, teeming dark heart, its still surface broken only by the skittering of hundreds of phosphorescent coot feet, its quiet violated only by the self-conscious chatter of female walkers seeking fitness in cautious herds, or the indigestive squawk of a disturbed heron. A headlamped solitary jogger, disappearing into pools of darkness along the intermittently lit trail, then reappearing triumphant, steeled herself for the prolonged period of darkness that awaited her at the lake’s poorly illuminated southern end . . .
They were lying about the weight. Flip worked at the New York Racing Association, and he heard: Fredo here, Maximiliano there, five pounds here, even ten there. They were heavier than their declared weights. And if you knew the real numbers the jockeys were weighing in at, you knew the lighter. The honest jockey had a better chance at winning. Better than better. Flip had been watching all summer from opening day up to the Travers, and he’d been right on the money every time . . .
Chloe Zolovská had sworn never to return to Southeast Baltimore’s wasteland of condemned rowhouses, abandoned factories, defunct railroad tracks, pimps, hookers, junkies, and the babies they had by accident—including her—but there she was . . .
He sold the Ludington townhouse at a loss, bought the cabin east of Manistee for a steal. Bankruptcy. Someone’s loss, his gain. He was a wheeler-dealer. Also a ladies’ man. When women discovered he was single, they pouted their lips, batted their eyes . . .
I live in a place where the Erie Canal sliced like a razor blade through the middle of our town. From that time on we were the extra bits of fat that are cut away to let the meat breathe . . .
The doing didn’t take long to get done. It was a hot night at the end of October, just at the time in Brisbane when the jacaranda have almost all fallen to the ground and the frangipani are blossoming on the trees. Frankie and Johnnie were spread around the deck of the small house that she rented in Annerley. 10 pm on Friday night and they hadn’t made it out . . .
By eleven in the morning the streets of Devine, Texas were as flat and as hot as the griddle the cook downstairs was doing bacon and eggs on . . .