It Was Too Important A Matter, This

People Forgot; It Was In The Nature Of People To Forget, To Blur Boundaries, To Retell Stories To Come Out The Way They Wanted Them To Come Out, To Remember Things As How They Ought To Be Instead Of How They Were.

What Was New Was The Fact That, Despite My Heart Doing Its Fight-or-flight, Help-we're-prey-and-hey-stupid-that's-a-vampire Number, I Was Glad To See Him. Ridiculous But True. Scary But True.

My Sheets Had Never Been So Clean As They Had In The Past Few Months. I Hardly Got Them On Again Before Something Else Happened And I Was Feverishly Ripping Them Off And Stuffing Them In The Wash With Double Amounts Of Soap And All The "extra" Buttons Pushed: Extra Wash, Extra Rinse, Extra Water, Extra Spin, Extra Protection Against Things That Go Bump In The Night.

It Doesn't Matter If I'm Only To Be Gone Four Days, As In This Case; I Take Six Months' Supply Of Reading Material Everywhere. Anyone Who Needs Further Explication Of This Eccentricity Can Find It Usefully Set Out In The First Pages Of W. Somerset Maugham's Story "the Book-bag.

She Fell Asleep, Leaning On His Chest, And He Edged Her A Little Off A Particularly Painful Bruise, Leaned His Head Back Against The Tree He Had Propped Them Up Against, And Closed His Own Eyes.