Sublime

Unlike the professorial Declan, Ben Diamond looks vaguely menacing, with his shaved head and black leather jacket. It takes innate command presence to pull off a look like that at age seventy-three, but Ben still has it.

the desire to face the unexpected in a wilderness environment; to live by my wits; and, in the process, I hoped to develop higher levels of skill, intuition, and confidence. I was drawn to these types of challenges. I found them compelling and, as I got older, increasingly difficult to resist. I’d had my share of adventure. The

Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.

My natural instinct was always for concealment.

His boots were dark and practical, his pants black, his shirt crisp white and missing the sleeves. The chains that spiraled up his tanned arms glistened in the sun, reflecting light like a steel mirror. An otherworldly cloak, woven from what looked like solid shadows, rose from the ground behind him. It flowed like a cape, untouched by the breeze,

His boots were dark and practical, his pants black, his shirt crisp white and missing the sleeves. The chains that spiraled up his tanned arms glistened in the sun, reflecting light like a steel mirror. An otherworldly cloak, woven from what looked like solid shadows, rose from the ground behind him. It flowed like a cape, untouched by the breeze,

There is nothing shaggy or uncareful about him. Taut, press shy, and disposed to choose his words with a pair of tweezers, Jesse, now in his fifties, prefers to do his work out of public view, and preferably from the one-room cabin where he lives by himself in the rugged hills north of San Francisco, off the grid except for a fast Internet connecti

It’s been years since everyone wore masks everywhere, years since the Spanish flu. He realized he preferred to cover his face. He hates his face. The freckles. Despises them. They look like mistakes. They are from his mother. His aquiline nose and round face are from his father. He can more easily pass for white with a mask on. He was wearing a mas