Undressing Her Was An Act

All The Preparation In The World Doesn't Avail You If You Can't Make That Imaginative Leap And Put Yourself In The Position Of The Characters You've Created, To Imagine What It's Like To Be Somebody Else.

A Delicate, Inexorable Lattice Of Inferences Began To Assemble Themselves, Like A Crystal, In The Old Man's Mind, Shivering, Catching The Light In Glints And Surmises.

The Rest Of Sitka's Homicides Are So-called Crimes Of Passion, Which Is A Shorthand Way Of Expressing The Mathematical Product Of Alcohol And Firearms.

Misogyny Comes Naturally To A Young Man In His Late Teens; It Is A Function Of The Powerful Homosocial Impulses That Flower Along Fraternity Row, That Drove The Mod Movements Of The Middle Sixties And Late Seventies, That Lie At The Heart Of Every Rock Band Formed By Men Of That Age.

It Never Takes Longer Than A Few Minutes, When They Get Together, For Everyone To Revert To The State Of Nature, Like A Party Marooned By A Shipwreck. That's What A Family Is. Also The Storm At Sea, The Ship, And The Unknown Shore. And The Hats And The Whiskey Stills That You Make Out Of Bamboo And Coconuts. And The Fire That You Light To Keep Away The Beasts.