“One percent hydrocortisone is not the same as 0.05 percent hydrocortisone. They were parked in front of Walgreens and she also pointed out that, in the prior few days alone, Jeremy had proved himself smarter than (and infuriated): a former congressman turned big-name Silicon Valley investor his former business partner the guy behind the counter at Walgreens. She had pointed this out in their last conversation - not the last last conversation but the one before that. “It’s like M&Ms crusading against childhood obesity,” she said.
Nobody, Emily tells him, is less qualified to predict and prevent armed conflict, war. Options: Jog spend the last sixty-five dollars on clothes or a haircut pick up a thirty-something subverting hunger for children into some exotic erotic position? In the morning, maybe he’d put too fine a point on her transparency to find out if truth inspires yelling or tears. It’s right beneath the second from the left of four computer monitors, the one with the map. When he opens them again, a long moment later, he finds his gaze aimed at the computer’s on/off switch. With his right thumb, he rubs circles on the tender spot just inside his left shoulder, suppresses a wince. magazine with a headshot Jeremy had nearly deigned to smile for. He flips it to the floor, where it lands beside a crumpled Inc. Jeremy squeezes the pencil, feels its rubbery vulnerability. A sweetness floats in the air, owing to something starting to turn in a Chinese food takeout container over the small fridge. In their shadow, on a rectangular black mat covering the blond wood desk, sit two cell phones. Next to the paper scrap an iPad rests on two books, Superstring Theory: Volume I, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dating. Lets the tip fall on a jagged scrap of paper. “Salam,” she expels the word with a laugh.įeels razor claws reaching her through the bars. She understands this to be the most docile time of the lion’s day. The lion flops over, facing the woman now, but still in repose.
At your service.” Her accent carries generations of migration, ports of call, millennia of weariness and duty. She thinks: San Francisco is supposed to be so humane.
She inhales the scent of damp fur and old meat. She stops in front of the tall bars of the cage door. Without taking her eyes from the animal, she takes three steps to her left. From the pocket of a black wool knee-length coat, she pulls a hard-earned skeleton key. It is rolled on its side, heavy eyes closed, heavy paws stretched out, lazy with confidence, even in sleep.Ī hat pulled tightly over the woman’s short black hair does little to protect her from the predawn chill. The beast behind the glass does not stir. The woman taps on the quadruple-paned glass, thick enough to swallow her whisper and the greeting of her index finger.
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