The Society of S

After we became a couple, she composed our time together. She planned days as if they were artistic events. One afternoon we went to Tybee Island for a picnic; we ate blueberries and drank champagne tinted with curacao and listened to Miles Davis, and when I asked the name of her perfume, she said it was L'Heure Bleue. She talked about 'perfect moments.' One such moment happened that afternoon; she'd been napping; I lay next to her, reading. She said, 'I'll always remember the sounds of the sea and of pages turning, and the smell of L'Heure Bleue. For me they signify love.

My father was right: people are always leaving. They fall in and out of your life like shadows.

What's life without risk," my father said. "Nothing but mauvais foi [bad faith]

She especially liked my bedside lamp, which had a five-sided porcelain shade. Unlit, the shade seemed like bumpy ivory. Lit, each panel came to life with the image of a bird: a blue jay, a cardinal, wrens, an oriole, and a dove. Kathleen turned it off and on again, several times. "How does it do that?" "The panels are called lithophanes." I knew because I'd asked my father about the lamp, years ago. "The porcelain is carved and painted. You can see it if you look inside the shade." "No," she said. "It's magic. I don't want to know how it's done.

In practicing the art of confusion, there is no better weapon than poetry.

Who chose burial monuments? Were the wishes of the deceased taken into consideration? It was a subject I'd never considered before.

She looked at me for a second and said, "Oh, never mind. I guess it's true what Mom said? That you've led a sheltered life?" I said I thought the description fairly apt.

Even a dull life could make worthwhile reading, he said, provided the writer paid sufficient attention to detail.

What about stakes in the heart?" I asked now. He frowned, the center of his mouth pursed while its corners curled downward. "Anyone will die from a stake in the heart," he said. "And anyone will die if they're severely burned, including vampires.

Would you agree," he said, "that man's sole duty is to produce as much pleasure as possible?" "Only if the pleasure produced is equivalent to the diminution of pain." My father crossed his arms. "And only if one man's pleasure is as important as any other's.