Excerpt
Jennifer swallowed her protest and asked instead, “Is it my teaching ability that’s a problem?”
“Honestly speaking, Mrs. White, though you lack the rigor necessary for academic research, your teaching ability is sound. Hoefert said as much to me just today.”
Chopyk fiddled with his glasses for a few seconds. He was a small man, not quite her lanky height and seemed dwarfed behind the antique oak desk. She willed herself to wait patiently.
“How shall I put it? I’m a bachelor, as I think you know, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in marriage vows.” Already she had an uneasy feeling where this monologue was heading. “Since the advent of the pill,” he shot her a quick look, “young women, even married women, have so much more freedom.”
“Well, we’re not kept chained in the kitchen,” she responded pertly.
He appeared not to have heard her but went on, eyes on the ceiling. “Just, please—if you’re going to share leadership of this trip—remember you are a mature woman and a professional academic.”
Mature woman? She was about to turn 30. She wasn’t ready for the old folks’ home yet. “I would always act with professionalism, if that’s what you mean…Has there been some suggestion that I haven’t?”
“It pains me to mention this”—though he didn’t look pained—“but word of your marriage break-up and consequent separation has circulated within the department with some vigour.”
“That’s my personal business,” she murmured.
“Not if we’re travelling together with a gaggle of adolescent students. Do you understand? You must be an example to them.”
At least the interview had cleared the air on that score. After that, while trip preparations got under way, there had been an uneasy truce between them, and she found she was looking forward to the opportunity to teach as much as she was looking forward to the Soviet Union.
★
As the plane bucked and rolled, Jennifer’s ears popped, and she recalled reading how dangerous it was for a plane to land during an electrical storm. Where were the emergency exits? One passenger, a sombre man who had embarked at Paris, appeared to be praying. Paul had closed his eyes though she was comforted to see that he was still smiling.
Praise under the Rain
I
let us give something to the Theresia of Jesus Christ
let us give something to the great poet
let us give something to Pablo Picasso
but let us give nothing
to the black mouths of water wells
to the worthy of tears Bactrian camels
to the dark clocks of war
Excerpt
Ken put his pencil down and slowly came back to the room. “Come
and take a look,” he said.
She stood beside him and silently gazed at the picture. “I wish I could
do that,” she whispered. Then she placed a hand on his head, “My god,
you’re soaking,” she said. Ken’s hair was as wet as if he had come in from
a spring shower. His shirt clung to his body in damp folds.
Still gloriously naked, Jessica sat beside him on the couch and told him
what it was like to be an Indian. She and her sister had been fortunate.
They had escaped much of the pain that so many of her race had lived
through. The girls had attended a public school but Patrick had been sent
to a residential school and refused to talk about those years.
The Indians had been chased from their land again and again. She expressed
no anger or resentment. Her voice remained gentle and soft –
that gentleness fanned the flames of Ken’s anger. Wars had been fought in
Europe over territory and land. Why had the Indians not fought back?
“It’s not in our nature to lash out and hurt others,” she said. “When we
get hurt, we hurt ourselves. It seems to be something that is rooted deeply
in our cultural background.”
She said that she and Patrick and her sister belonged nowhere. They
were not white and yet by Indian standards, they were not natives either.
They belonged to no tribe and did not live on a reservation. They were
completely free and had no wish to be involved in any part of the political
or racial battle. “We’ve managed to make a very good life for ourselves,”
she said. “We work together, we are partners and we help each other.”
Jessica was describing the life he wished to live. His story was different
but it was also the same. He too had no desire to be categorized or pigeonholed.
He too wanted to unfold and allow life to happen rather than
force any particular direction.
Jessica turned down the lights, leaving one kerosene lamp glowing in
the dark. Then she took Ken’s hand and led him into her bedroom. Like
everything else about her, her room was also unexpected. It was as spare
and sparse as her manner. To still his turmoil, Ken forced all his concentration
on studying his new surroundings. He slipped under the goose
down cover and Jessica lay opposite him, her face cradled in her hand, her
eyes unblinking, gazing deeply into his. “I’ve never slept with a man,” she
said. “I’ll bet you can’t say that.”
“Actually I can,” he said grinning.
“You know what I mean,” she smiled back at him.
“Yes, I do.”
She waited and when he didn’t reach for her, she asked, “Is there something
about me? Maybe, you don’t like me?”
Excerpt
On a Wednesday morning, a few days after his afternoon with Frances, Mario called to inform Eteo that the prospectus for Nostra Ventures had been filed and that they should hear from the regulators in three to four weeks. Eteo congratulated Mario for the speedy job he had done, and around noon, Mitch arrived with an equally positive update on the prospectus papers for Alexa Ventures. These were ready, too, and Mitch was taking them personally to the corporate guy upstairs.
Eteo called Cameron and asked him to take care of the new filing as soon as it came in, which he promised to do. A few colleagues from the back office and accounting called Eteo to ask if they could have some shares in Nostra Ventures. Susan was one of them, and Eteo promised a thousand shares to each. He advised them to contact their respective brokers, who would be the ones to write the actual orders. Then he put aside shares for Frances, as he had promised her, and another fifty thousand for John, the head trader, for allocating to a few of his buddies. Finally he reserved ten thousand shares for each of the dozen junior brokers Bradley had suggested to him.
a hair on the menu
hajszál az étlapon
searching for a dyed pink hair I am in a quest
like a courtesan in a bed of flowers
my gaze slips to your swollen breasts
I need you only for a few fleeting hours
Excerpt
Especially this morning as he stumbled to
the toilet, dropped to his knees, and wretched his guts out. For
maybe ten or twenty minutes Joel, continued to engage in the ritual
of dry heaves. And every time he thought it was over, because
he needed to get to his office, his entire body would be overcome
by yet another compelling desire to puke and he would once
again gag into the toilet. Once the heaves subsided, Joel was
wasted of whatever strength he might have. The coolness of the
porcelain toilet bowl on his forehead was a comforting feeling as
he rested to regain his strength to rise. Eventually, knowing that
he just could not afford to be late again, Joel rose, brushed his
teeth, and shaved. Lately, Joel had taken to simply using the
razor every other day. But looking at himself in the mirror this
morning, Joel realized that it had probably been three and maybe
even four days since his face had been visited by the razor. Knowing
that with his hands shaking as they were and realizing that he
was going to be late again, Joel opted to quickly shave his upper
lip and race to the office. A shower would have been nice. No, a
shower would have been wonderful, but he couldn’t afford many
more reprimands from the office manager, Mr. Lee, for being late.
Even if he was the best damn engineer on the waterfront, Joel was
pushing his luck.
After throwing his old rumpled suit on, Joel rushed down the
stairs to the teeming street below where he quickly hailed a cab and
twenty minutes later rushed into the offices of Empire Engineering
Works. Empire was one of those harbor-based engineering firms
that specialized in all kinds of projects on the Hong Kong waterfront.
Joel had been with Empire for many years now, including
postings at the home office in London and an endless string of
assignments around the globe that usually lasted anywhere from
twelve to twenty-four months. He had actually spent nearly three
years at one posting in Amsterdam, but that was only because of
overlapping projects, and once the first project, a new dry dock facility,
was completed, he was asked to finish up a project with another
team of engineers who were designing a new pier for the ferry fleet.
Manolis Aligizakis 