"if the Party doesn't support them?" My hands were touching my wrinkles as I spoke ... now, crawling through the ravines on my forehead, scurrying through the wiry vegetation of my eye­ ... brows, acquainting myself nervously with the new map of my face. Myoid face was there and not there, ...

Page 28 from Issue 75 many sponges. At another point, because my heart kept kicking the pacemaker ... lead out, they had almost decided to cut their way through the front of my chest and install the ... electrodes directly on my heart. In the end, however, the tip of the lead bit and snagged, the ventricle ...

somewhere. My friend the diplomat had asked to go along; he was then a junior man, new to the embassy, and ... At length, bothered by my silence, he asked me if anything was wrong. What was I thinking about? ... I said I was so bored I was planning my funeral. He thought that very funny and laughed all the way back ...

leaves out. My father was a powerful man, an athlete, a man well loved by the taxi drivers, the fleet ... a businessman-or maybe Uncle Cy needed him to feel like a nobody. When my grandfather became sick, my uncle sent my ... expendable father to California to nurse the old man. My father didn't know how to refuse. And ...

Immediately, my throbbing headache disappeared and I was filled with a kind of bliss I hadn't felt ... I felt next is that I had somehow stepped into paradise. Tears came to my eyes, then an enveloping smile. ... higher level than I ever had before. I've lost everything now, I thought, my parents, my wife, ...