On the first bite, you know they’ve used cyanide and you think: they’re finally trying to kill me. You’ve always looked ahead into the raveling naughts and ones that pattern the future. You’ve followed each symbol, each theorem through your… Continue Reading
The bombers were coming again, the sirens screaming. Rita pulled away from the crowd exiting the nightclub and started toward the coat check station. She could bear the cold but not what would happen if she didn’t make it back… Continue Reading
As much as he had never signed up for this duty, as much as his bosses said it didn’t exist, Louie figured he was stuck with it now. The thunder of planes taking off and landing a few meters away,… Continue Reading
Let nothing upset you; let nothing frighten you. Everything is changing; God alone is changeless… — Teresa of Avila She was Thérèse for the French one but the words of the Spanish one saved her. Calm practicality; unarguable truth. Ecstasy… Continue Reading
At 2 am on 30 June, 1890, Nicola Tesla walked from the Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue to Central Park. A lone horse-cab clopped past. To register his bid for the title Mr Ultimate Power, he needed four statues of the… Continue Reading
What enormities can occur in a tiny moment. Catastrophes or miracles, irrevocable in either case. Lives lost or saved, depending on uninformed decisions made in the blink of an eye. To make the wrong choice could bring unendurable consequences. Benghazi… Continue Reading
I break my first leg when I’m eleven. It belongs to Pil Hinkley, the druggist’s boy. A white boy. That’s what Pa says as he smacks me, you don’t break no white man’s leg. Ain’t no man, I say. Pil… Continue Reading
The snow crunches under my glove as I compress it across the lip of the ridge. I’ve been sitting here for hours in a snowy ditch, waiting for something, something that I’ve just seen — movement. Scarcely taking my eyes… Continue Reading
“They’ve got old Blackbeard’s head on display on a gibbet down at the Hampton River dock,” Adolf Harting remarked, looking up from his newsletter at the dinner table. “That’s nice, dear,” his wife replied absently as she cleared the remnants… Continue Reading
“Anton, listen to me. You won’t get anywhere like this.” Herr Hoffmann looked over my shoulder at the notes I was composing and sighed. “The salons of von Genzinger want something new. Your five-finger piano exercises use tunes from twenty… Continue Reading