“Well now, congratulations. Quite a celebration here,” says an older man in a stiff black suit and dark tie. He looks funereal, gaunt.
“Yes, thank you,” Dance says, looking up sharply. A cloud of odor hangs around the man, pungent …
Getting in a shower, or taking a swim first thing at the hotel, seemed like a reasonable plan back when Dance didn’t know where they were going for their first night. That was another of Drin’s secret gifts. It turns …
“Don’t do it,” Emma says.
The man is too smart to pretend he doesn’t know what she means; she’s caught his considering look far too often in the past week. And now he’s wearing that caught-in-the-cookie-jar expression, as if she
Dance’s stupid lover, his stubborn man, is still sitting at his desk, even though Dance told him it was bedtime, right now, two weeks of rehearsals from hell and no time for anything but quickies in the shower, god don’t …
The guide says, “Is everybody ready? Is everybody hanging onto the hand of the person next to you? Okay, we’re turning out the lights, so you can experience what it is like in a cave without human interference. Hang on …
They’ve shared hotel rooms before. They shared this one, last night.
It’s late afternoon, and the conference-supplied bus ride back is excruciating for its lack of privacy. Dance rides on the window side, with Emma’s thigh pressing against his as …
Tourists often get their pictures taken at the cheaper attractions, standing behind silly pictures painted on tall boards, with their heads showing through holes. This apparently gave Emma the idea of pulling off a higher-brow version of this. She has …
Drin gets a kick out of standing in the Metro Airport waiting area in his dark suit. He’s holding a sign emblazoned with Dance’s name in the Korean characters, and he’s pretending to be a chauffeur waiting for his pickup.…
You must always remember, Drin tells himself, to greet the old man at the crossroads in the morning. Acknowledge the crone at the railroad crossing.
It’s always surprising, the results you get when you do.
And even more so when …