Stranger Things Happen

You were going to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It's hard on the feet perhaps, but staying at home is hard on the heart, and you weren't quite ready to give up on him yet.

This is the list you carry in your pocket, of the things you plan to say to Kay, when you find him, if you find him: 1. I’m sorry that I forgot to water your ferns while you were away that time. 2. When you said that I reminded you of your mother, was that a good thing? 3. I never really liked your friends all that much. 4. None of my friends ever really liked you. 5. Do you remember when the cat ran away, and I cried and cried and made you put up posters, and she never came back? I wasn’t crying because she didn’t come back. I was crying because I’d taken her to the woods, and I was scared she’d come back and tell you what I’d done, but I guess a wolf got her, or something. She never liked me anyway. 6. I never liked your mother. 7. After you left, I didn’t water your plants on purpose. They’re all dead. 8. Goodbye. 9. Were you ever really in love with me? 10. Was I good in bed, or just average? 11. What exactly did you mean, when you said that it was fine that I had put on a little weight, that you thought I was even more beautiful, that I should go ahead and eat as much as I wanted, but when I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, I was exactly the same weight as before, I hadn’t gained a single pound? 12. So all those times, I’m being honest here, every single time, and anyway I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I faked every orgasm you ever thought I had. Women can do that, you know. You never made me come, not even once. 13. So maybe I’m an idiot, but I used to be in love with you. 14. I slept with some guy, I didn’t mean to, it just kind of happened. Is that how it was with you? Not that I’m making any apologies, or that I’d accept yours, I just want to know. 15. My feet hurt, and it’s all your fault. 16. I mean it this time, goodbye.

Sometimes it is safer to read maps with your feet.

Tell me which you could sooner do without, love or water.” “What do you mean?” “I mean, could you live without love, or could you live without water?” “Why can’t I have both?

The world is a dangerous place, full of people who don’t trust each other. This is why I am staying up in this tree.

Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead. Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that part of you.

What happens when you get to the end of the world? Sometimes you find a party. This party has been going on for a long time. There is music, lights, people drinking and dancing. Strange things happen at these parties. It is the end of the world, after all.

Even when your eyes are closed, it feels black. As black as black ever gets, like if you touch it, your hand might get stuck in it, like tar or black quicksand or when you stretch out your hand at night, to turn on a light, but all you feel is darkness.

Hildy has resigned herself to this, that life is a series of sudden disappearences, leavetakings without the proper good-byes. Someday she too might vanish. Some days she looks forward to learning this trick.

perhaps with the guardsman who had such brown eyes, and a mustache that curled up on either side of his nose like two waxed black laces, even as this guardsman, whose name you didn't ask calls out a name in his sleep that is not your name, you are dreaming about the road again. When

Marriage has affected the laws of gravity. We will now revolve around each other. You will exert gravity on me, and I will exert gravity on you. We are one another's moons. You are holding onto my feet with both hands, as if otherwise you might fall right off the bed. I think I might float up and hit the ceiling, splat, if you let go. Please don't let go.

I'm just borrowing him––I don't want him to leave his wife. I'm glad he's married. Let someone else take care of him. It's the way he smells––the way married men smell. I can smell when a happily married man comes into a room, and they can smell me too, I think. So can the wives––that's why he has to take a shower when he leaves me.

The cellists don't look. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. They are fucking their cellos with their fingers, stroking music out, promising the ghost yodels and Patsy Cline and funeral marches and whole cities of music and music to eat and music to put on and wear like clothes. It isn't music Louise has ever heard before. It sounds like a lullaby, and then it sounds like a pack of wolves, and then it sounds like a slaughterhouse, and then it sounds like a motel room and a married man saying I love you and the shower is running at the same time. It makes her teeth ache and her heart rattle.

At the top of the staircase is a wooden door with a silver keyhole. The dreams pour steadily through the keyhole, and under the bottom of the door, and when you open it, the sweet stink and cloud of dreams are so thick in the Princess’s bedroom that you can barely breathe. Some people might mistake the scent of the Princess’s dreams for the scent of sex; then again, some people mistake sex for love.

You suppose that you could walk around, but your feet tell you that the map leads directly through the briar wall, and you can’t stray from the path that has been laid out for you. Remember what happened to the little girl, your great-grandmother, in her red woolen cape. Maps protect their travelers, but only if the travelers obey the dictates of their maps. This is what you have been told.

Rachel was in a back corner, partly hidden by a shelving cart. “Goddammit, goddammit to hell,” she was saying, as she flung a book down. “Stupid book, stupid, useless, stupid, know-nothing books.” She kicked at the book several more times, and stomped on it for good measure. Then she looked up and saw Carroll and the boy behind him. “Oh,” she said. “You again.” Carroll turned and glared at the boy. “What’s the matter,” he said. “Haven’t you ever seen a librarian at work?

I viaggi sono duri per le ragazze sole. E poi c’era quella ragazza che camminò a est del sole e a ovest della luna in cerca del suo innamorato che se n’era andato perché lei gli aveva fatto cadere la cera bollente sulla camicia da notte. Prima di ritrovarlo ha consumato addirittura un paio di robuste scarpe di ferro. E, da’ retta a noi, non ne valeva neanche la pena. Cosa credi che le sia successo la prima volta che si è dimenticata di mettere l’ammorbidente nella lavatrice?

A girl from Pittsburgh was a good thing, like an anchor. Every homesick traveler should have one.