He’d grown unused to woods like this. He’d become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things.

Why do you have to ruin everything?′ he asked. ‘Why do you have to name everything? Decide what’s real and what’s – why can’t you just enjoy things? What’s wrong with you?

He’d wanted to – he didn’t know. Break bottles. Break windows, crash cars. Burn down the world. Find solace at the bottom of countless more bottles of wine, this time consumed in solitude. In the end he did none of these things; while he knew the shapes and forms of rage and grief, he had, in truth, nothing more than gentleness inside to sustain him.

Everything laughed.

The broken centerline of the road in her headlights just an endless pulsing ribbon.

Fell?' he asked. 'Or was pushed?'Anton shrugged again. 'It hardly makes a difference,' he said, 'when you are the man at the bottom of the stairs.

What's a reputation for, if not for proceeding oneself?

I listen to the grinding whir of the clock, and the creaking of my listing bed, and the sound the phone doesn't make when it's shut off.

Life went back to normal, after that, as it will do if you're not careful.

In the dim light of the closed bar, he thought at first it was silver, but as he reached inside and held it up, he saw that it was a gleaming white, so dazzling he knew he had never properly seen the color white before, only paler, inferior shades.