Welcome Thieves

Torrentials have four songs. Three originals, which suck, and a cover of Thompson Twins’s “Hold Me Now,” which sucks.

Gabriel, it’s vital to remember that there’s absolutely nothing you couldn’t take 80 percent less seriously.

Except possibly generalized statements involving percentages.

“Listen, thanks for coming,” Benny Winters says, grabs his shoulder exactly where the lifeguard did. Uncle Benny has silver eyebrows and Gatsby hair, smells like cologne made from orphans’ tears

moved in the next day, found a job as an attendant to a man who was very rich, who had one of those illnesses where you’re perfectly healthy

THE DOCTOR UNTIED his mask and strapped on his sympathy

Stare into a series of serious eyes, plunge between a series of unfamiliar legs, by the third date fail to be the person you could be for them if only you were different

et your father pretend that’s not why he started talking to you again. Decide to major in film. Let your father pretend that’s not why he’s no longer talking to you again.

I know she’s playing a role. I’d seen it happen with actors before, when eccentricity becomes a drug, when they lose themselves in caricature because they barely had a self to begin with.

The principal finally dialed up Stu Mayse, who’d been caught fondling twins but then found Jesus and opened Amayzing Grace and Grocery, mostly giving back to the community in the form of double coupons but in this case told he was funding a scholarship or else

Danny kissed them all good-bye, especially the shy, brown-­kneed daughters with their charming mispronunciation of Daniel, with their stoic knowledge of exactly who he was and how they would avoid his ilk when the time or puberty came, but for now cheek-­to-­cheek in the established continental style.