I always dressed up for deadline days. Heels, skirt, smart green jacket. Magazine publishing has its rhythms and if the editor won’t dance to them, she can’t expect her staff to. I don’t float feature ideas in Fendi heels, and I don’t close an issue in Pumas.
-from “Little Bee” by Chris Cleave, my new read that is totally sucking me in, in a dangerous “may not accomplish anything else this week” way.
There was a joke he liked. Goes something like this. Two guys meet at the Pearly Gates and get talking. One says to the other: ‘How did you die?’
‘I froze to death,’ he says.
‘What did it feel like?’ says the first one.
‘Well, it’s uncomfortable at first,’ says the second. ‘You shiver, you get the shakes, there’s pain in your fingers and toes, it’s cold as hell, but then it becomes relaxing and you just go numb and fall asleep and that’s it. What about you? How did you die?’
‘I had a heart attack. See, I knew my wife was cheating on me, so I came home early one day, found her in bed, reading. Middle of the afternoon. How suspicious is that? So I ran round the whole house looking for the guy she was fucking. Down to the basement. No one there. Up to the second floor. No one there. Then I ran fast as I could to the attic, I knew he had to be hiding somewhere. Just as I got there – boom. I had a heart attack, and here I am.’
The second man shakes his head.
‘That’s so ironic,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If only you’d stopped to look in the freezer, we’d both be alive.’
-from “Circle of the Dead,” by Ingrid Black
It’s not enough to just live; you have to have something to live for.
-Adama. BStarG. 1.1 (miniseries)