Sublime

That Thomas had worked for the Chronicle since 1976 was easily established, as was the fact that he’d published three brief novels since that date. Out of a sense of delicacy Carleton never mentioned that he owned all three of these, and found them elegant and elliptical, couched in prose that had the cadence of the King James Bible, and concerned

undaunted. But at his layover in Paris he meets his match: a surprise

crudités

impedimenta:

She ate one meal a day, at lunchtime—ham-and-cheese roll-ups drizzled with honey. Otherwise, she drank can after can of Diet Coke in the morning, and then about midafternoon she switched to mango margaritas, and the margaritas saw her out. She said this was pandemic behavior, but the only kitchen equipment she brought with her when she moved in was

“What a world,”

She will, she decides, keep him for the night unless she thinks he’s a genuine danger: she will send nobody back for a bad T-shirt or a haphazard approach to home deodorizing, for cutting his own hair, for rewatching The Wire, for filling the living room with Funko Pops. She does not have the fortitude, tonight, to explore the parameters of the att

They watch TV and have their dessert, spooning up a mixture of raspberry sorbet and Peter Steinman’s brains.