French Exit

by Patrick deWitt

The plum was delivered on a heavy, filigreed tray. She sat in the center of her overlarge, sunlit bed and ate it, hopeful for a valid experience, but it erred on the dry side, possessed no magic, and did nothing to lessen much less solve her deeper difficulties. This was unfortunate but unsurprising and she didn’t let the fruit’s failure influence her mood.

It occurred to her that, so long as she maintained forward motion, her life could not not continue, a comforting equation that conjured in her a sense of empowerment and ease.

He didn’t take the notion of God seriously but couldn’t deny the feeling of beatitude he knew when he sat in a church pew. He attributed this to aesthetics; he wasn’t conflicted about it.

“Do you ever feel,” she asked, “that adulthood was thrust upon you at too young an age, and that you are still essentially a child mimicking the behaviors of the adults all around you in hopes they won’t discover the meager contents of your heart?”

Hers was a mixed fate, she thought: to know brilliance on sight, but never to command it.

“I’ve been neither lucky nor unlucky,” she said. “I’ve been luckless—such a bore.”

my life is riddled by clichés, but do you know what a cliché is? It’s a story so fine and thrilling that it’s grown old in its hopeful retelling.”