High Noon

Excuse me? Tonight you represent every dateless woman in this city, every woman who's about to sit down to a lonely meal of Weight Watchers past primavera she's just nuked in the microwave. Every woman who will get into bed tonight with a book or reruns of Sex and the City as her only companion. You are our shining hope....But no pressure.

People who say not to speak ill of the dead are hypocrites, because you can take it ot the bank they're thinking ill.

The man was useless as tits on a bull, but he didn't deserve to die like that.

Or she could remember that sometimes pride was less important than doing what had to be done. She

She put it away, locked up the turmoil that seeing, hearing, watching Arnie Meeks had made swirl inside her. No time, no place for it now. It would come back, she knew, spurting

up to twist her belly into knots. When it did, she’d just have to find a way to uncoil them until there was time, until there was a place. She had a whole checklist of priorities ahead of that one. On

I thought I was pretty damn clever. She said that was all right, she’d make three wishes. The first was that I wouldn’t piss this money away being an idiot and forgetting I had

some brains. The second was that I take this opportunity, this gift, and make something of myself. I guess I looked like a balloon that had its air pricked out, because she laughed and laughed, and she gave me a slap on the arm. She told me if I needed to give her something, if I needed to do that to be happy, she’d like a pair of red shoes with heels and open toes. Size nine. Wouldn’t she be some sight going to church Sundays in those red shoes?

swear, being in a hospital’s like being in a den of vampires. They never get enough of your blood.

One of the layers was old hurts. How had he managed to bury that? She knew a lot about old hurts, and just how hard they were to keep down in the cellar of things. He didn’t wear his wounds as a point of pride, and many did. He might brood over them from time to time, and she appreciated a good brood herself. But he didn’t appear to let those old wounds, those old scars run his life. On

weeping, her eyes exhausted from worry. “I did my best. I did all