End of Story

by A.J. Finn

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” he says. “You’re not Greek, are you?”

TIME IS THE BEST KILLER.

nil nisi bonum,

The Latin phrase De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est, "Of the dead nothing but good is to be said." — abbreviated Nil nisi bonum — is a mortuary aphorism indicating that it is socially inappropriate for the living to speak ill of the dead who cannot defend or justify themselves.

Conversations are always dangerous if you have something to hide.

my mind is like a crowded box-room with packets of all sorts stowed away therein, so many that I may well have but a vague perception of what was there.’”

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”

“People your age—young people, I mean—you treat your lives like galleries, for public display, open to all. My life is no gallery. It’s a vault, a black box, and—I’m sorry I can’t put this more elegantly—it’s nobody’s damn business.”

roman à clef

Roman à clef (/roʊˌmɒn ə ˈkleɪ/ roh-MON ə KLAY, French: [ʁɔmɑ̃n‿a kle]; lit. 'novel with a key') is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people and the "key" is the relationship between the non-fiction and the fiction. This metaphorical key may be produced separately—typically as an explicit guide to the text by the author—or implied, through the use of epigraphs or other literary techniques.

Nicky sighs, spots a FOR RENT sign in a dusty storefront, AMY’S LAUNDRY painted across the glass. “When I see a sign like that,” she says, “I think, Man, it must’ve been so exciting for Amy, watching them stencil the window, getting business cards printed, the grand opening . . . Her family must’ve felt proud.” They slide beneath a green light. “And then working, probably very hard, for whatever it was she wanted, and putting up with whatever she put up with, only to wind up like that.” The Amy-less store recedes from view. “Opening a business must be like a marriage,” Nicky concludes. “Nobody goes into it assuming they’ll fail. But she did. Amy, I mean. So I feel terribly for her. Because she had a dream and it died and that’s sad. I know what failure’s like; most people do, on some scale. It’s humiliating! And unfair! And I think most people—not all people, but most—I think they deserve better.” A respectful silence. After a moment, Sebastian opens his eyes and says, “Amy’s Laundry was a drug front.”

I just loved the way this is written. I've had the same thought process as I've driven through parts of towns as a visitor.

There’s no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

She thinks of her friends, her family, her dog; thinks of Friday-afternoon classes and the New England sea in summer; thinks of lasagna, of musicals, of her steamer trunk. “Happy.”

“You’d make quite the psychoanalyst. Or at least a priest. There’s a whiff of the confessional about you.” Sebastian’s eyes are narrowed, as though he’s trying to locate the exact words. “A man finds himself saying what he hadn’t meant to say. That’s a gift. And a weapon.”

“As Simon St. John tells us, the past is a poison. Tolerable only in trace amounts.” “I remember. But the past is gone.” “Oh, no.” Now he turns to her, and his smile is so sad she could cry. “The past isn’t gone. It’s just waiting.”

“I think it’s good to learn to live with fear,” he said. “Fear and failure. And the unknown.”

“‘A woman who doesn’t lie,’” she replies, “‘is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.’”

“But in any marriage—you’re not married? I didn’t think so—in any marriage there are places you don’t visit. Like plots of acrid land.”

“Life is loss,” says Diana, very softly. After a moment, Nicky shrugs. “Life is change. And—discovery.”

“We say ‘She’s full of heart’ or ‘He’s got guts,’ but the fact is, most of us are made of not a little scar tissue. I’m interested in the wounds a person keeps secret. Even the madness. Why do we hide them?” “Why would we show them?”

“‘All human wisdom,’” says Sebastian, “‘is summed up in these two words: wait and hope.’ Monte Cristo.

moral indignation is envy with a halo.”

‘It belongs to human nature to hate him whom you have harmed.’” She opens her eyes again, finds her teacup. “We hate those we hurt.”

“‘A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world,’” he says. “‘It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.’”

An instance in the present echoes an instance in the past.

‘What we all dread most is a maze with no center.’”