4
" No problem," Gale replies. " I wake up ten times a night anyway." " To make sure Katniss is still here?" asks Peeta." Something like that," ..." That was funny, what Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her." " Well, WE never have," ..." She loves you, you know," says Peeta. " She as good as told me after they whipped you." " Don't believe it," Gale answers. " The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell...well she never kissed me like that." " It was just part of the show," Peeta tells him, although there's an edge of doubt in his voice." No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her you love her." There's a long pause. " I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then." " You couldn't," says Peeta. " She'd never have forgiven you. You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life." ..." I wonder how she'll make up her mind." " Oh, that I do know." I can just catch Gale's last words through the layer of fur. " Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without "
7
" For that half-hour in the hospital delivery room I was intimate with immensity, for that half-minute before birth I held her hands and for that duration we three were undivided, I felt the blood of her pulse as we gripped hands, felt her blood beat in the rhythm that reached into the baby as she slipped into the doctor's hands, and for a few days we touched that immensity, we saw through her eyes to an immense intimacy, saw through to where she had come from, I felt important being next to her, and the feeling lasted when we entered our car for the drive home, thinking to myself that we weren't to be trusted with our baby, the feeling lasting while I measured us against the landscape, the February rain, the pewter sky, and then the rain freezing to the roadway, the warmth of the interior of the car with its unbreakable transparent sky dome and doors, until the car spun on the ice in the lane and twirled so that I could take an hour to describe how I threw up my hands in anguish as the baby slipped from her arms and whipped into the face of her mother reflected in the glass door, and she caught the baby back into her arms as the car glided to a stop in its usual place at the end of the drive, and nothing but silence and a few drops of blood at a nostril suggested that we would now be intimate with the immensities of death (" Interim" ) "
10
" Do you see that man in the black Porsche?" I asked the women.They squinted out at Ranger. " Yes," they said." Your partner." " He's homeless. He's looking for a place to stay and he might be interested in renting Singh's room." Mrs.Apusenja's eyes widened. " We could use the income." She looked at Nonnie and then back at Ranger. " Is he married?" " Nope. He's single. He's a real catch." Connie did something between a gasp and a snort and buried her head back behind the computer. " Thank you for everything." Mrs.Apusenja said. " I suppose you are not such a bad slut. I will go talk to your partner.:" Omigod," Connie said, when the door closed behind the Apusenja's. " Ranger's going to kill you." The Apusenjas stood beside the Porsche, talkig to Ranger for a few long minutes, giving him the big sales pitch. The pitch wound down, Ranger responded, and Mrs. Apusenja looked disappointed. The two women crossed the road and got into the burgundy Escort and quickly drove away. Ranger turned his head in my direction and our eyes met. His expression was still bemused, but this time it was the sort of bemused expression a kid has when he's pulling the wings off a fly." Uh-Oh," Connie said. I whipped around and faced Connie. " Quick, give me an FTA. You're backed up, right? For God's sake, give me something fast. I need a reason to stand here until he calms down!" Connie shoved a pile of folders at me. " Pick one. Any one! Oh shit, he's getting out of his car." ....He leaned into me and his lips brushed the shell of my ear. " Feeling playful?" " I don't know what you're talking about." " Watch your back babe. I will get even." -Ranger and Stephanie "
20
" Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. "
― Sarah Vowell