SHORT STORY (quotes)

The first sentence(s) and the last sentence(s): 7 SHORT STORIES

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1. A STORY: A man, once a wealthy banker but now anonymous in rags, retired, richer than ever, wandered the streets of our city. And looks at you, as if for the first time.
2. THEY LET ME tend to my husband’s burial and settle his affairs. And it’s the only one I get.
3. WALLACE WENT ALL the way to Florida to fight a Brazilian middleweight he’d never heard of for ten thousand dollars. It was delightful.
4. AFTER DINNER, NOBODY went home right away. Then sometimes I get up and don my robe and go out into our quiet neighborhood looking for a magic thread, a magic sword, a magic horse.
5. MANY YEARS AGO, after I retired from the bank, James brought a small terrier to our apartment in Paris. “Please don’t leave,” I say.
6. THIS HAPPENS A lot-people travel and they find places they like so much, they think they’ve risen to their best selves just by being there. –we were having an unavoidable moment, my aunt and I, of each feeling sorry for the other. In our separate ways. How could we not?
7. MY FATHER MADE it as far as Little Iceland. That was the name of the iceberg they found his notebook frozen into, interred like a fossil. By which she means she understands that one day I will leave her too. Lift off the ground, think myself beyond gravity. Let go.

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(Excerpts quoted from: Fingerprints, Moving On, You’ll Apologize if You Have To, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, Madame Lazarus, About My Aunt, North.)