She leans toward Kurt Cobain like she wants to throw her arms around him and hold him, like she's forgotten that her arms don't work and there's no him to embrace. (查看原文)
Inside the wallet are a Costco membership card, some cash and a handwritten list of Internet casinos with ID numbers and passwords. There is a California driver's license with an address in L.A. that Nonc could map with his DIAD, and there's an ancient laminated doctor's note stating that he is a mute. Nonc picks up a key chain, a large one with all manner of car keys, Toyota, Ford, Hyundai. One of the keys is for a boat, a Grady-White, which are the best. And there's a packet of white hankies, which his father used to clean his trach tube. All this stuff is just sitting on Nonc's lap. He feels like he's rifling through it, like his dad might walk in at any moment and catch him. He feels like his father died long ago, and these are relics. He brushes it all onto the couch, the keys, the ca... (查看原文)
Nonc knows that someday, after Marnie takes the boy back and he grows older, he won't remember these moments, the way they showered early at the Red Cross, foraged for their morning pizza, roamed the countryside together in a brown panel van. It's probably a good thing, Nonc tells himself. Developmentally, it's got to be good for him. He strokes the boy's hair. (查看原文)
Interesting facts: Chuck Norris tackles seventeen bad guys at once in Missing in Action III. Clint Eastwood takes up the gun again in Unforgiven. George Clooney is hauntingly vulnerable in The Descendants. Do you know why? Dead wives. (查看原文)
[The curator] indicates all the students in the cafe with us. "Look at how they stare at these phones. That is our biggest competition. On the tours, half of them are updating their Facebook pages, texting their friends, tweeting and so on. Some YouTube the entire tour but never seem to experience it. To think what the Stasi went through to spy on us. Even they couldn't dream of a world in which citizens voluntarily carried tracking devices, conducted self-surveillance and reported on themselves, morning, noon and night." (查看原文)
A prison is not a pretty place, this we know. Perhaps it would be easier on a wife and daughter if a man were a farmer or a folksinger. But someone must run the facilities, someone must undertake the unpleasant tasks. It's not like, with a father who'd been imprisoned by the Soviets, I could advance in the Party. It's not like, with a mother who'd nursed Germans and GIs alike, I was welcome at any universities, which I'd dreamed of attending. And Nina forgets that she went to the best schools because of my service. (查看原文)
Soon his attention returned to Seoul's bewildering nature. Here were women in plastic surgery masks and little dogs wearing dresses. Passing a fitness center, DJ stared at rows of men running on treadmills. What force was driving them? What were they running from? Next came a cat cafe and a parlor where teenage girls danced with machines. At an empty shopping plaza, he watched an escalator endlessly cycle, the steps appearing, rising and disappearing as it carried no one up to nowhere. (查看原文)
Soon they were leaning against the dasher boards, watching the skaters carve the ice. The music was loud, so you couldn't hear the best part—the blades scissoring the curves. (查看原文)
Mina laughed at this. "And what do you think I should sing about?"
"How about a woman searching for her husband? She never gives up. In fact, she plays her accordion at every subway stop in Seoul."
"You think that would make a good song?"
"Are you kidding?" Dj asked. "It would get you on one of those contest shows. A beautiful woman makes a daring escape and then scours a new country, playing North Korean tunes in search of the man she loves. There wouldn't be a dry eye in the house."
Mina started playing again. "I only said I had to find my husband," she said. "I never claimed to love him."
I never claimed to love him. Dj heard those words through an entire dishwashing shift. The water was scalding hot. It penetrated his hands, gave him focus. And the racks of dishes never ended. DJ didn... (查看原文)
[A veteran DJ met in the male dormitory said:] "When I was over there, everything was bobby-trapped. Man, all I wanted was to get out. We weren't in combat or anything. That was the Americans. But anything you came across might blow up—a car, a Dumpster, a pile of trash. And shit blew, trust me, I saw it. I had to take pills to sleep. The funny thing is, now I can't stop thinking about that place. When I close my eyes, Iraq is all I see." (查看原文)
