As the army prepared to set out on its homeward march with my body, leaving behind only my blood gathered in a leaden vessel, I felt for a while that the world had fallen silent forever. 

My job as an elementary-school teacher ended abruptly after eight weeks. Walking heavily to my car, I was devastated, but I recognize now that I was never cut out to be a teacher, for reasons that have nothing

Today I helped bury Reinhold Wladyslaw Bezinski, the man who saved me from becoming an embittered, second-rate French horn player, I once thought telling this story would pay my debt to him.

What I had with Stern, I suppose, was a kind of friendship, a blasted mutuality because we were the only Americans in Lecce, thrown together because we had taken a job teaching there at an American language school.

Marguerite took her show on the road, a last tour, to end at the Capitol, where the senior senator from Rhode Island had arranged a performance for the combined Houses.

Marimba had beautiful teeth. They were not especially good teeth, or strong, but they were well-honed —small, white was the white keys on a piano, and lewd as the rosewood keys, come to think of it, on a marimba.

When she smiled, her front teeth rested on her lower lip,and she felt the angle, the bevelling, identical tooth to tooth.

The best day I remember was the Easter we lived in Detroit, locked in the apartment all day. The furniture, the rugs, began to breathe. Geraniums hummed. I thought, so this is a lively place.

Where woods and wall began, she got off the bicycle and wheeled it the rest of the way up the hill, glancing uneasily at the wall. Higher than a man, it was topped by jagged triangles of glass—a clear statement that the De Rogiets had no use for intruders. 

I’ve always loved salmon. Not to eat, as I don’t eat fish, but I’ve always loved salmon in general because salmon jump and no one knows why.