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"Do you know…" I thought I saw alo, I decided I’d seen only aacross one cheek of the lunar face "Do you know thirteen ways?"
"Thirteen ways?"
"The blackbird thing," I said, wiping at the glass again with the Kleenex My breath had left a faint condensation
"Blackbird Sure"
We were talking about Wallace Stevens’s poe at a Blackbird"
My father worried about how I, limited by XP, would make it in the world without fae and the proceeds of a huge life insurance policy But he had given acy, too: a love of modern poetry Because Sasha had acquired this passion from me, we could confound eavesdroppers as Bobby and I had done by using surfer lingo
"There’s a word you expect hi to Stevens, "but it never appears"
"Ah," she said, and I knew she was followingto a blackbird would surely use the ing, but Stevens never resorts to it
"You realize who I --once Lilly Travis--had been the first woman I had loved and the first to break my heart
Sasha is the second woman I have loved in the most profound sense of the word, and she swears that she will never break my heart I believe her She never lies
Sasha has also assured me that if I ever cheat on her, she’ll use her Black & Decker power drill to put a half-inch bit through my heart
I have seen the drill The bits--an extensive set--that go with it are kept in a plastic case On the steel shank of the half-inch auger bit, using red nail polish, she has painted my name: Chris I’m pretty sure this is a joke
She doesn’t have to worry If I ever broke her heart, I would drillto wash her hands afterward
Callabout?" Sasha asked
"You’ll find out when you get there"
"Any e There’s still hope"
I wasn’t as confident as I sounded There e I’d just sent to Lilly I’m not proud of the fact that, unlike Sasha, I sometimes lie
"Where are you?" Sasha asked
"Dead Town"
"Damn"
"Well, you asked"
"Always in trouble"
"My motto"
I didn’t dare tell her about Orson, not even indirectly, using poetry code My voice uish, which I was striving ht he was in serious jeopardy, she would insist on co help I’d recently been surprised to discover Sasha possessed self-defense skills and weapons expertise that weren’t taught in any disc-jockey school Though she didn’t look like an Amazon, she could do battle like one She was, however, an even better friend than fighter, and Lilly Wing needed Sasha’s sympathy and compassion more than I needed backup
"Chris, you knohat your probleht," she said sarcastically
"Too s"
"Then I better ask ives-a-daet you killed"
"This is for a friend," I reht Bobby’s coy"
"I’ll tell hiuess--we’re Curly and Larry"
"Right Neither of you is sh to be Moe"
"Love you, Goodall"
"Love you, Snowman"
I switched off the phone and was about to turn away froain This ti across a corner of the moon
This ti both hands
The monkeys were not in a barrel and not in a pack The correct word for roup is not pack or herd, not pride or flock, but troop
Recently, I have learned a great deal about monkeys, not only the ter in the Florida Everglades, I would becoators
Here, now, deep in Dead Town, a troop ofin the direction I’d been headed In the ht, their coats looked silvery rather than brown
In spite of this luster, which made them more visible than they would have been otherwise, I had difficulty taking an accurate count Five, six, eight…Some traveled on all fours, soht as a hu fast, and they repeatedly raised their heads, scanning the night ahead and on both sides, so suspiciously back the way they had conify caution or even fear, I suspected that they were not afraid of anything and that instead they were searching for so
Maybe , costuht inspire sht These speci, or play miniature accordions Not one seehteen
They were rhesus monkeys, the species most often used in medical research, and all were at the upper end of the size range for their kind: more than two feet tall, twenty-five or even thirty pounds of bone and muscle I knew from hard experience that these particular rhesuses were quick, agile, strong, uncannily serous