Legs. Bare legs glinting in the torpid summer sun, pervading my senses and the sweet, egg-laden yeasty smell of plaited bread, challah, rising and heaving in my mother’s oven — those were my first impressions of women. The women drifted past my basement window, legs...
Over millions of years ago Breakheart Woods, between Saugus and Wakefield in Massachusetts, and a dozen miles from Boston, had been bookmarked by boulders and blow-offs and earthly cataclysm. To this day, somewhere in its innards from those first struggles of granite...
V. “Ben,” I said. I was clutching his arm. The streets ran with rain; a cold wind was coming down off the mountains, and all the people we passed had their hats pulled low over their eyes. “Ben. I’m really depressed with the Alvarezes. I can’t stand it. I’m doing...
III. The house was quite dark, and the stone made it cold and damp, a bit like sleeping in a castle—or its dungeon. Veronica, it turned out, was going to sleep in the same room that we were, the big front room that looked out on the street. She had, though, a...
I. Ben and I had been in Lima a week when we decided to take an eight-hour bus ride to the mountain town of Huaraz. There, we would acclimatize for a few days while we planned a three-day trek in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range. Huaraz was known as the gateway...
