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Things were indeed going so well—Jessica had come back, she had asked him to move in—that he kept waiting for something to go wrong. He had to stop obsessing. Obsession does not seek out problems and correct them; it manufactures them out of nothing, feeds them, makes them stronger.
obsession
The house had the stale smell of a grandparent. When you’re a kid, the smell gives you the creeps; when you’re an adult, you want to bottle it and let it out with a cup of cocoa on a bad day.
Old gangsters had indeed moved into more legitimate enterprises—why limit yourself to prostitution and drugs and loan sharking when there were so many other ways to turn a buck?—but even with the best of intentions, it never worked out. Guys like the Aches couldn’t help themselves really. They’d start out legit, but once things got the slightest bit tough, once they lost out on a contract or a sale or something, they reverted back to their old ways. Couldn’t help it. Corruption too was a terrible addiction, but where were the support groups?
where are the support groups?
Mrs. Kay taught him how to use the microfilm machine and the computer indexing service. It looked pretty standard. When she left him alone, Myron first typed in the name Anita Slaughter. No hits. Not a surprise, but hey, you never know. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you plug in the name, and an article comes up and says, “I ran away to Florence, Italy. You can find me at the Plaza Lucchesi hotel on the Arno River, room 218.” Well, not often. But sometimes.
but sometimes you get lucky......
Politics and the press: two cherished institutions that spoke with tongues so forked they could double for fine dinnerware.
“True enough,” Esperanza agreed. She slapped her knees and stood. “Guess I’m wrong. Can I go now?” “So why do you still hold a grudge?” “I like grudges,” Esperanza said. “They’re easier than forgiveness.”
Bradford’s handlers blended into the crowd and passed out big signs and buttons and even those goofy Styrofoam hats, all with the same hip “BRADFORD FOR GOVERNOR” lettering. Every once in a while the interspersed handlers would break into applause, and the rest of the crowd would lazily follow suit. There was also a sprinkling of media and cable stations, local political correspondents who looked visibly pained by what they were doing, wondering what was worse: covering yet another canned political speech or losing a limb in a machinery mishap. Their expressions indicated a toss-up.
He studied his hair in the visor mirror. “Being this handsome. It is not easy, you realize.” “And yet you suffer without complaint.” “That is my way.” Win took one last look before snapping the visor back in place.
