"Yo, there, buddy. Lookin' for somethin'? Cause I got somethin' for you." Corbin took a good look at the burly man who had materialized from behind a stack of metal barrels beyond where the light over the alley door into the Christopher Street bar reached. He took a good look, reaching a quick decision because of the overly friendly way the man was extendin...
"Yes, hold just like that, please. You pose well." "As well I should," Philip answered as he put an arm up to lean on the frame of the door out to the balcony. All he was wearing was an opaque dress shirt, unbuttoned and gaping open, which was made even more opaque—luminous even—by the backlighting of the sun beyond the balcony of the eleventh-floor, Darlin...
The rented Jeep Wrangler sputtered and died as Ben was approaching the base of the Vallecito Mountains northeast of Durango, Colorado, and, with a muttered "Shit," he guided the vehicle over to the side of the road. There wasn't any secret why the old Wrangler had died. It was out of gas. Ben had rented the car for the summer from a used car dealer down in D...
As I stood outside the entrance to the old British colonial-style Windsor Hotel in Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka, in the shadow of Mount Pidurutagala, waiting for someone to take me up to the ashram, I couldn't believe how far—and how far back in time—I had moved from Teddy's cabin in the Catskills. From the moment Teddy's business partner, Mort Whitley, had drive...
I think I just might be the best peach picker in Virginia. Well, in Rockingham County at least. And that isn't just me boasting. That's what Brother Jeb said all the time I was picking peaches for him. And Mr. Howell said that to me too. More than once he said that. I've heard both men say that, in the peach business, it's getting the first fruit of the seas...
Daniel had walked a good three miles southwest on Highway 411 out of Maryville, Tennessee, southeast of Knoxville, before he decided to try what he'd been told was surefire success in getting him a hitch. He wanted to get as far away from Knoxville as fast as he could. Every time he saw a white Ford 150 truck, he nearly dove into the bushes at the side of th...
It was peculiar to feel being the stranger and interloper at the funeral of the woman you'd been married to for fifteen years, but that's exactly how I felt as I stood graveside at Denver's Fairmount Cemetery and listened to the priest drone on talking about who must have been some other woman than Emily. This was particularly so, as every time I looked up,...
"That's one sweet ass. You are one sexy piece of ass." "I can sing too, and will look good in front of your band," I said, trying to keep the focus on why I was there, in the sleazy hotel room, tinted red by the "O" and the "L" of the flashing neon sign just outside the window. I wondered if he could hear the pain in my voice, although chances were that he...
23 May 1890 Southampton Docks, England Joanna, My Love: How I miss you, even after only three days since having been by your side—and more. And especially I regret not letting you come to see me off on my journey of establishing our future. My traveling companion, the Heyward Company representative, David Paxton, is spending our last evening in port with...
Stefan almost had me that warm afternoon in the summer pavilion of the Eisler country house in the Vienna Woods. We had played two sets of tennis, stripped down to our shorts in the unusual August heat on the mountainside above Vienna, and I knew by the way he looked at me that he wanted me. And, truth be told, I think I wanted him as well. I'd always had th...