Nell Zink

"Once I moved out of my parents’ house, I calmed down a lot. I just didn’t like having people breathing down my neck."

That made sense. It would be a reason to marry someone too shy to ask personal questions. It was also a way of saying: I wasn’t doing drugs when we met and I’m not doing drugs now, but if you breathe down my neck, I’ll do drugs.

[...]

Our next stop was called Mancuso’s Loft. It was running drum 'n' bass. The proprietor waved us in. Here I saw Stephen through new eyes. Then I ran to the ladies’ room and stuffed my ears with toilet paper. Stephen led me to the floor and yelled, “I’m going to dance a little bit!” He then proceeded to dance as if he had never seen me, or any other human being, before in his life.

[...]

She stumbled along, obviously unused to explaining her actions or motivations to anyone and therefore making them as transparent as frog spawn. She wasn’t up to prevaricating with every word, the skill she so admired in Stephen. It takes a lifetime of practice. She had found her master, her teacher, too late. She simply knew she was about to lose something valuable, and like anybody else, she wanted to take the next logical step to make it her own: She wanted to fuck it.

The poster campaign hadn’t cost Stephen any real heartache. But once the money ran out, Global Rivers Alliance’s self-promotion migrated online, and to his sorrow, every single person who toyed with the idea of wiring two dollars to George first felt compelled to debate the merits of Wasserkraft Nein Danke with him. Most were themselves running tiny organisations that had arisen by spontaneous generation or mitosis. No one had supporters. Stephen spent hours writing closely argued defenses of himself and his aims. Each one is unique, because you can’t copy anything anymore without being caught. Rushed, because anyone who didn’t get an answer within fourteen hours would write again with more questions.

He was silent for three minutes, as long as the minutes of silence that pepper the conversations in Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence.

[...]

“A life laid waste before it begins,” I said, quoting Stephen’s frequent references to the profoundly discouraging climax of the classic Icelandic novel Independent People by Halldor Laxness.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

[...]

The sordidness of my reflections was dragging my mood through the cocoa powder, as the Germans say, and I recalled that the author of Philosophy in the Boudoir did not come to a good end, so I joined in the conversation. “I like birds,” I said.

"Why don't we deal booze?" Lomax said. "Like in Prohibition."

"Are you nuts?" the Seal said. "Going up against a state monopoly! You want the ATF coming down on us? If you're going to do a crime, you've got to do something illegal, so you're not competing directly with the government. That would be like if I started my own army instead of hiring on in Sri Lanka. Or smuggling cigarettes. That's not little piss-ant drug dealer shit. For that, you need the Mafia."

There was a brief silence, broken by the sound of Flea struggling with thick brownie batter in the kitchen.

"You know what's fun?" Meg said, leaning forward suddenly. "Tennis."