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"Little monsters Look what they’ve done"

"Do you want sley asked, alood s for pleasure "I didn’t pack un, but I can use my hands I can drown them and make it look like an accident Oui? Non?"

Her dark eyes flashed in his direction

"Are youme?"

"Not at all," he said Pas du tout If this wo him the heads of those boys to her on a platter, he would have done it

"No," she said "Let theo They’re in God’s hands We all are"

It could have been a platitude--in God’s hands--but the way she said it made it sound like a fearful threat

The woman knelt in the sand in front of the bush that the boys had attacked with their rocks She studied the scene of carnage--the shattered eggs, the broken nest

"Men destroy everything," she said, talking to herself "Why do they have to destroy everything?"

Carefully, as if the nest was round and tucked it into a tree Then she bent down again and covered the broken eggs with sand She did so quietly, reverently, as if perfor a sacred burial ritual Thefor her lost babies

"Try again, Maain for me"

He looked at her face, and saw tears on it Tears over a broken nest and a baby bird

Fuck Manhattan And fuck the entire world

Haiti had just got very interesting

10

Upstate New York

"BEWARE THE IDES of March" read the note Kingsley had slipped under her bedroom door "Don’t drink any alcohol today Dress in your finest and wait for sley’s version of a birthday card? Card and invitation She hadn’t planned on a big party for her twenty-sixth birthday Sounded like Kingsley had planned one for her

When evening turned to night and the city turned on its lights and switched off its inhibitions, Kingsley put her in the back of his Rolls-Royce He had a s told her she was about to get her birthday present

"You know I’ve had sex in the back of a Rolls-Royce," she reminded him "So don’t even ask"