The Wallcreeper

by Nell Zink

I don’t see what that has to do with having a good relationship. It should be about getting through difficult stuff together. Difficult stuff the world throws at you, not difficult stuff you do to each other. The difference right now between me and St. Laurence is, he didn’t have the option of taking his hand off the hot stove.”

“Just shut up,” I said. “I think you’re cute. That’s your nationality. Cute.”

An educated woman with little kids (I didn’t imagine her having acquired them by any other means than hot sex) is a model of feminist, as well as feminine, virtue.

I was the expense of spirit in a waste of shame. Unless sex is worth something.