EVEN HERE, MARIA THOUGHT, a pebble’s throw from the grimy once-ornate facade of the Egyptian Museum, the fetid stew of Cairo in July hung in the air, noxious and unhealthy. From the car she could see shimmering thermal patterns, like ghostly dervishes, whirling through the late-afternoon falluca traffic on the river. Joey’s rubber ball made […]
From where I sat within the screened-in porch, I could see them emerging in the distance through the heavy amber mist. They walked beside an angry sea, a churning mass of whitecaps gliding toward the beaches with ends like frazzled lace. They were two barely discernible human shapes, man and woman, floating in my frame […]
FRANCES watched him as he stood in the patch of garden in the sweltering night, squinting into the grate on which the steaks sizzled, intense and absorbed in his task. In the airconditioned cool of the den, she sipped the martini he had mixed with scrupulous care. It was strange and bitter to her taste. […]
An early spring sun, all light and no warmth, was slipping behind the gargoyled, columned mass of the Yaroslav station as a black Zil pulled smoothly up to the main entrance. The policeman posted there stiffened as he noticed the large, official-looking car. The driver and his companion in the front seat, both small-eyed, […]
THE PUNGENT AROMA of the awakening spring earth and the manure of the hundred-odd horse entries of the Middleburg Hunt Races wafted over the soft greening field. Spaces allocated to patrons of the races were filled with elaborately decorated tables, some with candelabra, crystal and silver tureens, colorful flower arrangements, linen tablecloths and exotic food […]
“That’s it,” Fiona FitzGerald said aloud. She rose on an elbow and looked at the red digital numbers on the bedtable clock, a reflex, as if the moment of revelation needed a marker. “What’s ‘it’?” Harrison mumbled, stirring. She felt the warmth of his naked flank where it touched hers. She had duly noted, dating […]
YIDDISH When it was first organized, the Sunset Village Yiddish Club met once a week. Members talked in Yiddish, read passages from the Yiddish papers to each other, and discussed, in Yiddish, the works of Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer that they had read during the week—in the original Yiddish, of course. The members […]
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